Yeah, the kind of anxiety/panic disorders I described are exceptionally rare. Want to know one of the best signs that a person has a genuine mental illness? This applies to anxiety/panic disorders, and others. It's pretty simple: **If it's genuine, the person will probably try to keep it secret because THEY FEEL ASHAMED because there's "something wrong with them".** A genuinely suicidal person doesn't text all of his friends that he's going to kill himself, and spend the next 2 hours being babied by his friends. He writes a note and just does it. Same with mental illnesses. A lot of retards walk around fucking broadcasting every disorder they have been diagnosed with. The faggot from the article is *absolutely* one of those types. One of the first things you will know about him, with just polite small-talk between strangers, is that he has terrible anxiety and depression and AIDS. **People who broadcast this shit do it because it has benefited them in the past. It gets them special treatment, so they lead with it.** Faggot in the article probably got out of work and all kinds of lousy situations by crying about his anxiety, and it finally paid off in the form of like half a million dollars. Disgusting. This isn't always the case, but it seems that most of the time people have real anxiety/panic disorders, there has been some head trauma or some kind of event that messed with their brain, like a drug overdose or seizure. It's essentially the brain misfiring. Normal anxiety is one thing, but the kind of anxiety these poor folks feel is utterly overwhelming to the point where it affects them physically. Those are the ones with the real problems. Also, if you can predict "If I go to the birthday party, I will have an anxiety attack", you don't have an anxiety disorder- you're just a coward who's using a mental illness diagnosis as an excuse to not improve yourself. Most panic/anxiety attacks come on suddenly, without warning, and often in very odd circumstances. A guy could go to a concert, be among a huge crowd with all the noise and movement, and he's fine... but then sitting in his room alone 2 hours later, suddenly he's overcome by the sensation that something is about to attack him and kill him. And he knows there is no threat. This is frustrating, so it makes the event even worse because the guy becomes angry at himself for feeling these things for no reason. It's truly horrible, and these people have my sympathy. But fuckers who play it up, like I suspect the guy in the article does, piss me off- they make it harder for people with real problems to get help.