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Elena Song

Professor Silva

Health Education

16 November 2017

Case Study Analysis: Katya and Anxiety

Katya, a student who already does well enough in her studies, finds herself suffering from

anxiety. This causes her to get panic attacks before exams, which is proving to be problematic

since her chemistry exam is coming up. She finds the fact that her scholarship is riding on her

getting a good grade on this test to add tremendous amounts of stress, since her grade point

average is a 3.0 and lowering it will cause her the loss of her scholarship. However, this

predicament has caused her to start panicking, and it is impeding on her studies. Considering

that her test is coming up in a couple days, she is in desperate need of advice.

As someone who is suffered from anxiety herself, the idea that factors like exams can

cause spiraling panic attacks is understandable. What is worse, if your idea of self-worth relies

on the scores you can get in school, anytime it does not meet your requirements your confidence

gets shaken-- affecting your mood and possibly risking depression, as you let yourself get

consumed by equating your worth as a person to standards you set yourself. This standard is

usually set by comparing yourself to your peers, who you most likely looked to because they

exerted the self-confidence you desperately needed. Herein lies the problem: your anxiety is will

not dissipate until the stressor is resolved or the task has been completed, yet your depression

removes all motivation to make any kind of progress and saps your energy from completing said
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task. You find yourself hostage in an inescapable situation and end up blaming yourself for the

burden of all your stress, burying yourself further into your depression and heightening the

magnitude of your anxiety for the next big issue to enter your life.

There are a couple steps to take to stop the anxiety, for both short and long term. What

Katya could immediately do, as recommended by the article Unraveling Anxiety and Depression,

is to try and make sure she is getting enough sleep each night and eliminating caffeine from her

diet (Mynatt & Cunningham, 2007). It may seem counterproductive at first, as not being able to

maximize time for studying might look like it could increase levels of anxiety, but not getting

enough sleep could not only make retaining information gathered from studying harder, but it

can decrease mental health and become physically taxing for the body, only exacerbating the

effects of her anxiety. It is also recommended that she decreases drug and alcohol use, if

applicable, as it is shown to also be a catalyst for stress, rather than a suppressor (Mynatt &

Cunningham, 2007). As another point, according to the article Exam Anxiety Induces

Significant Blood Pressure and Heart Rate Increase in College Students, it is suggested that

Katya, if applicable, should refrain from smoking as well (Zhang, et. al., 2011). Another popular

myth, smoking actually does not have the anxiety-quelling effects most users would think they

do. The studies in the article show that both the increase in blood pressure and the increase in

heart rate has been linked to cigarette usage (Zhang, et. al., 2011). In addition, a healthy diet,

regulated breaks from work, meditation, and other methods of self-care is highly recommended

to ease the stress before the exam; it is hoped that these will be enough to stave away panic

attacks temporarily. For long-term measures, it would be a little different. Along with

habituating the short-term practices, Katya would be recommended to seek professional help,
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with plans of getting consultation, prescriptions for medication, or both. Considering the

possibility that Katya may have so deeply intertwined her self-efficacy with her academic

performance, it is possible that her lowered sense of self-worth could develop into depression or

melancholia (Mynatt & Cunningham, 2007). With multiple psychiatric conditions involved, it

gets harder to unravel independently of a professional. Mynatt and Cunningham also

recommend pharmaceutical approaches, but only after psychiatric help was first sought. The

authors of Mediating Effects of Stress, Weight-Related Issues, and Depression on Suicidality in

College Students posit a different suggestion, where they persuade the reader to critically analyze

the association of weight loss attempts and body image with students-- especially female

students-- with anxiety and depression. In their study, they found that ...weight status, weight

perception, body dissatisfaction, and weight loss attempts are highly associated with depressive

symptoms in the general population (Smith, et. al., 2014) This could mean a number of

things, whether that be a notice for Katya to remember to try and exercise in the future to lower

stress (Zhang, et. al., 2011), or perhaps as advice to not be so concerned with body image, as

ones worth is not derived from how they look. If Katya should be discouraged from becoming a

statistic, it is important for her to maintain her notion of self-worth and efficacy not from things

such as weight or her studies, but from looking inward.

It goes without saying that medication and professional help may not be for everyone.

But the number of people that would not benefit from these are smaller than one would assume.

If I were in Katyas situation, I would seek the help of a notable psychiatrist and whatever

medication they prescribe. For me, it seems that the advice from an expert, along with proper

medicine, could assuage whatever chemical imbalance is present to be causing the anxiety in the
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first place. If anything, even if there is no physical trace of something off, you still can receive

advice on what psychological and emotional factor is playing a part in cultivating so much stress.

Should Katya accept this advice, there would be other changes she could make to support her

recovery, mainly from what was aforementioned. Practicing both the short-term and long-term

solutions, coupled with forming realistic expectations before each semester such as allowing

room for error and understanding that your self-worth is not tied to academic performance, are

not only what the experts would recommend, but I as well personally. The mutual hope is that

after time has passed and Katya can look back on the situation, she will see that actually, it was

never as bad as she thought.

References
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Mynatt, S., & Cunningham, P. (2007). Unraveling Anxiety and Depression. The Nurse

Practitioner, 32(8), 28-37. doi:10.1097/01.npr.0000282800.27561.e6

Smith, S. S., Carter, J. S., Karczewski, S., Pivarunas, B., Suffoletto, S., & Munin, A. (2014).

Mediating Effects of Stress, Weight-Related Issues, and Depression on Suicidality in College

Students. Journal of American College Health, 63(1), 1-12. doi:10.1080/07448481.2014.960420

Zhang, Z., Su, H., Peng, Q., Yang, Q., & Cheng, X. (2011). Exam Anxiety Induces Significant

Blood Pressure and Heart Rate Increase in College Students. Clinical and Experimental

Hypertension, 33(5), 281-286. doi:10.3109/10641963.2010.531850