Social anxiety disorder affects more than 15 million Americans of all ages, races, and cultures, and it may be present in children as well as adults. This disorder is an intense fear of being negatively judged by others.
PTSD is an illness that people may develop months after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, including a terrorist attack like 9/11; combat; earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, tornado, or other natural disaster; serious auto or plane accidents; personal assault or abuse; or the sudden death of a loved one.
Funding for this video provided by a grant from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP)
Generalized anxiety disorder can be hard to recognize because you may not think of yourself as worried or anxious. But if you are having physical pain, or waking up in the night, or sensitive to sounds, or overthinking things, you may have GAD. That's what happened to me.
For most of my life I’ve struggled with social anxiety disorder, along with generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, and depression. During the worst of it, I was on strong medication and medical disability benefits due to my fear of job interviews. I would feel uncomfortable or awkward in public 90 percent of the time.
Depression can affect anyone — men, women, and children — at any point in their lives. And its debilitating effects show up in many different ways. Doug Duncan tells us how depression changed his life.
There was a time when basic things—like driving, climbing a flight of stairs, taking a shower, or going through the checkout line at the grocery store—landed me somewhere between mortal unease and full-throttle terror. It all began with a single panic attack that seemed to strike out of the blue. Mistaking it for a heart attack, I called an ambulance, but I quickly learned that there is no ambulance for an alarm of the mind.
Nothing could have been worse for me than being a teenager in high school — until I became a teenager in high school with depression. 
Childhood anxiety, even severe and chronic, doesn’t necessarily stand in the way of success and achievement. But caring parents will do anything to help relieve their children of misery. Scott Stossel, the editor of The Atlantic magazine, tells his story of struggling, coping, and living a very productive life.
An excellent student, a talented singer and musician, a competitive athlete. That’s how I appeared on the outside as a young child, but I felt as though I were trapped in a nightmare that would never end. Years later, and after a lot of hard work, my bad dream is finally over.