Anxiety and Losing Touch With Reality

Have you ever been panicking over a test and forcing yourself to stay up all night to study only to realize that its getting harder to read? Maybe the words are beginning to change shape or blur? Maybe they simply begin to almost fall off the page? This alteration in the perception of the external world, in this case the textbook you are studying from, is usually attributed to a lack of sleep or over working ones self, however it could also be linked to the level of anxiety you are experiencing about the test, and it is called derealization.

Derealization occurs when a persons subjective experience of the world around them becomes altered in such a way that it begins to seem unreal. For instance a person might experience However the example above might be a stretch, the anxiety you feel about a test should never be overwhelming enough to cause derealization, but the phenomena is real none the less. A study conducted by David Trueman at Williams Paterson College of New Jersey used a questionnaire to poll 221 undergraduates on whether they were experiencing symptoms associated with depersonalization and derealization. Then the IPAT anxiety scale was used to poll the level of anxiety. Based on the results, it was found that participants who were experiencing depersonalization or derealization also had higher levels of anxiety and those who were experiencing both had the highest level of anxiety.

The study later went on to explore what types of anxiety produced more episodes of derealization and depersonalization and found that those who suffered from phobic-anxiety, a term that Trueman came up with for the study, tended to have more episodes. However the study did not take into account mental health illness such as Post-traumatic stress disorder or Agoraphobia. Would people who experience these disorders also experience episodes of derealization? And to what extent? Food for thought.

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