Eileen Power leads what can be considered a normal life. As a mother of two grown children, living in a nice home in Newfoundland, Canada she seems to have it all.
��But beneath this surface lurks the darkness of something Eileen kept a secret for years -- she suffers from panic-anxiety disorder. According to the American Psychiatric Association, about 23.3 million Americans - or 12 percent of the country's population - suffer from some form of this disorder.
�� Professor Pedro L. Delgado, University of Arizona's department of psychiatric research director, said the disorder is preva- lent, and sometimes is misdiagnosed as other diseases.
�� "Many people come into the emergency room short of breath saying they had a heart attack when in fact they had a panic attack," Delgado said.
�� Eileen has dealt with attacks regularly most of her life.
�� "Every morning, for the last 22 years, I have had a panic attack." Eileen said. "I tremble, I have shortness of breath and it feels like I'm going to die."
�� She said these attacks last 10 to 15 minutes, and can occur up to three times a day. For Eileen, they are a way of life.
��Eileen said she experienced her first panic attack when she was 13.
��"I was called upon in school to read out loud," she said. "I was trembling, shaking."
��She added that the fear overwhelmed her so much she refused to read out loud. She told her teacher a lie about having poor eyesight, making it impossible for her to read the words on the page. Eileen said she would have said anything to make the panic stop.
��She said she felt anxiety and fear. the only vague words she has to convey the feeling of her attack. Shortly after this incident, Eileen started wearing glasses. The next time her teacher called on her to read. she burst into tears.
��"I left school in ninth grade." she said. "I couldn't do it anymore.
��She avoided public situations where she knew she would go into a panic attack. She found a solution to her problem in alcohol.
��"One day. I discovered that if I had a drink or two, I lost most of my inhibitions and could compete with the best of friends." Eileen wrote in "Social Fears." an online essay she published to increase awareness about phobias.
��"But once I had my children, I stopped drinking. not wanting them to go through what I had to as the child of an alcoholic mother," she said.
��It wasn't until she was in her mid 30s, however, that Eileen had her first full-blown panic attack, prompting the paralyzing fear from which she still suffers.
��"I was viewing a minor traffic accident." she said. "All of a sudden, I started to shake, and I just wanted to get away. The closer and closer I got to home, the better I felt."
��This was the beginning of Eileen's development of agoraphobia, the fear of open public places. Eileen refused to leave the house alone without the company of one of her children.
��"Being agoraphobic. there weren't too many places I went alone. Come to think of it, I never went anywhere alone," Eileen said.
�� Now, after therapy and medication, she is overcoming her illness.
��"It's really hard for anyone that doesn't have this to understand what it feels like. But for those that do, the support that's out there today is tremendous," Eileen said.
Psychiatrists continually debate possible cures for panic-anxiety disorder.
��Later this month, the American Psychiatric Association will release a set of recommended guidelines regarding the treatment of excessive panic anxiety. One suggestion the list will offer is a combination of cognitive therapy and medicines like valium to combat the illness.
�� The reasons behind the disorder remain difficult to pinpoint, Delgado said.
�� "It may be genetic. There is evidence supporting inheritance of the likelihood of developing panic-anxiety disorder," he said.
��The genetic susceptibility may be related to a region in the brain known as the amygdala.
��"The amygdala, over to the side of the brain near the hippocampus, is largely responsible for the attachment of emotion to memories," Delgado said.
��When the amygdala continually experiences fear and anxiety in certain situations, it will send a signal to the hippocampus, which causes the body to react in such ways as breathing rapidly and increasing adrenalin.
�� "People often develop this fear of being afraid after a traumatic attack", Delgado said.
��In Eileen's case, her sequence of panic attacks occurred after the traumatic experience of witnessing an accident.
��The disorder's origin, however, is difficult to quantify. But this is only one theory of what could have caused Eileen's case to be so severe. "It's not likely that there is a single factor. It's like asking how many ways can you make a computer fuzzy. It's a whole circuit of things that could have caused that problem with the fuzziness of your monitor", Delgado said.
��Therapy for the disorder includes use of relaxation therapy. such as yoga. After patients learn how to relax, they are ready for exposure therapy - making someone face what they fear.
��"Exposure therapy is important." Eileen said.
She said she repeatedly visited the same supermarket stores and banks that she had found frightening to overcome her fear.
��Eileen still is in therapy, and she has constructed a webpage entitled "Eileen's Panic Page." The 100 e-mails she receives each week comment about her story.
��Eileen said the public needs to know about the disorder. According to a 1991 survey by the National Institute of Mental Health, only 4 percent of those surveyed could correctly answer questions about the panic-anxiety disorder.
��"There's a wealth of information out there." Eileen said. "I'm sure people can learn a lot from my story."