DSM Differential for Anxiety Disorders — Clinical Reference
Anxiety presentations overlap. GAD looks like health anxiety. Panic disorder looks like cardiac events. Social anxiety looks like introversion. OCD gets missed as general anxiety. PTSD gets treated as depression. This reference gives you the clinical signals that distinguish each, with treatment implications for each diagnosis.
What is in this cheat sheet
Generalized Anxiety Disorder — the worry that will not stop, the “what if” machine, what distinguishes clinical GAD from ordinary worry, and why cognitive approaches to worry content are often less effective than worry exposure and acceptance-based work.
Panic Disorder — the fear of fear, anticipatory anxiety as the primary maintenance mechanism, why the panic attacks themselves are less important than the avoidance they produce, and how to explain this to clients.
Social Anxiety Disorder — the specific feared situations, the relationship between performance and self-focus, and the difference between social anxiety and introversion or shyness.
Specific Phobia — the phobia types, what distinguishes specific phobia from other anxiety disorders, and why exposure is the evidence-based treatment with the strongest research base.
OCD — the obsession-compulsion cycle, why general CBT for anxiety makes OCD worse, the compulsions that are mental rather than behavioral, and the referral-to-ERP decision.
The differentials that trip therapists up — GAD vs. OCD, social anxiety vs. avoidant personality, panic vs. cardiac, health anxiety vs. GAD, PTSD vs. all of the above.
Treatment implications by diagnosis — what the evidence says about first-line approaches for each anxiety presentation and when medication consultation is warranted.