Who suffers from Panic Attacks?

Panic attacks are indiscriminate. Approximately 2-4% of the world population will experience panic attack symptoms at some stage during their lifetime. Anxiety disorders, which may or may not feature panic attacks affect approximately 1 in 4 people in a 12 month period.

Panic attacks affect twice as many women as men and occur, on the whole, between the ages of 26 and 45 years. With anxiety disorder as the underlying cause of panic attacks, the majority of sufferers experience their first panic attack as the result of stress-induced situations such as divorce, bereavement, work stress or money worries for example.

It is also claimed that panic disorder occurs in people who have a genetic pre-disposition to developing Anxiety disorder. This has yet to be proven, however there seems to be a very definite link between the development of panic attacks and exposure to another sufferer. This relationship between panic attack sufferers who live in close proximity is almost definitely caused by changes in behaviour, a behaviourally-adopted habit rather than a genetically-inherited trait.

Many children develop panic attacks when a parent or sibling is a sufferer. It seems that being exposed to sufferers, as their anxiety grows, is almost as infectious as yawning; the development of panic attacks can sometimes be inevitable.

Panic attacks can be experienced by a person of any age, sex, religion or sexual orientation, the biological and behavioural factors which must come together to form a panic disorder can be complex or very simple indeed; panic attack development is very different in each and every sufferer.