Fernando Vieira*
Background: Conceptual confusions have been made on anguish, fear, panic and anxiety. Anguish focuses on present events and is accompanied by a feeling of tightness or pain in the thoracic region. We aimed to investigate the linkage of anxiety and depression to the feeling of anguish.
Method: Based on an exploratory method, we identified 100 patients aged between 17 and 77 years old, attended at the anxiety and affective disorders clinics, 50 with anguish and 50 without anguish.
Results: The investigation concluded that symptoms more associated with anguish are somatization, fear, depressive mood, gastrointestinal, neurovegetative and cardiovascular symptoms, that anguish is more associated with depression than anxiety and that between anguish and anxiety fear is the symptom more frequent, and between anguish and depression, the symptoms with more frequency are the neurovegetatives.
Conclusion: This study provides more comprehensive incidence rates for anguish among depressive patients. However, according to patient reports, we can conclude that patients with anxiety disorders can also experience anguish.
Published Date: 2025-02-24; Received Date: 2023-07-09
