Panic attacks can occur in any type of anxiety, usually in response to a specific situation relating to the main features of anxiety. For example, a person with a phobia snakes can to panic when it finds them. However, these different situations of panic are those that are spontaneous, unprovoked, and which are those that define the problem as a pathological panic. Panic attacks are common: more than one third of adults show them every year. In women the likelihood of experiencing panic attacks is two to three times more high which in men. Pathological panic usually begins in late adolescence or early adulthood.

The symptoms of a panic attack (among others, shortness of breath, dizziness, increased heart rate, sweating, shortness of breath and chest pain) reach its peak intensity within the 10 minutes period and usually disappear in a few minutes, and therefore it is not possible that a doctor follow them, although it can see the fear of the person to suffer another panic attack. Since attacks of panic occur often unexpectedly and without apparent reason, people often express concern in advance due to the fear of another attack (a condition known as anxiety in advance). Therefore, on many occasions they try to avoid places in which suffered panic attacks previously. Avoid places for fear that something happens is called agoraphobia. If agoraphobia is very intense, the person who has it may even get to shut himself up in his home. Since the symptoms of a panic attack involve many vital organs, people often worry thinking that it suffers from a problem of the heart, the lungs or the brain, and why looking for help from a doctor or communicates with emergency service. While panic attacks are very uncomfortable and annoying, they do not represent any real health risk for those who suffer from it. Original author and source of the article.