Please read the passage and answer the questions that follow:
Mohan is a 16 years old boy studying in high school. He usually gets anxious in normal circumstances. He has bouts of anxiety attacks when his teachers give him any assignments. In normal times too, he shows symptoms like restlessness, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, frequent urination, rapid heart rate etc. He has unpleasant feelings of fear and apprehensions. After such observations his family members brought him to a psychologist for consultation. The psychologist took detailed information about his psychological attributes, history in the context of his physical & psycho-social environment and interviews with his parents. The parents recalled that their child has become anxious & fearful and is unable to relax. Gradually Mohan is isolating himself from all his near and dear ones.
On the basis of symptoms, Mohan is suffering from:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Anxiety disorders
Option (1) Obsessive-Compulsive disorder — Incorrect. In this disorder the person cannot stop thinking about a particular idea (obsession) or feels the need to repeat certain acts over and over again, such as checking or washing (compulsion). Mohan has no such repeated thought or act.
Option (2) Panic disorder — Incorrect. Panic disorder consists of recurrent anxiety attacks of intense terror that come in an unpredictable manner, with shortness of breath, choking, chest pain and a fear of losing control or dying. Mohan’s attacks come on when he is given assignments, not out of the blue, and his anxiety is present in normal times too, as restlessness and inability to relax; the passage describes no such terror. Panic disorder is in any case only one type of anxiety disorder, while the question asks for the disorder his whole picture fits.
Option (3) Anxiety disorders — Correct. Mohan has unpleasant feelings of fear and apprehension along with the bodily symptoms of anxiety: rapid heart rate, loss of appetite, sleeplessness and frequent urination. He is anxious even in normal circumstances, restless and unable to relax, which is the motor tension of generalised anxiety disorder, one of the anxiety disorders.
Option (4) Depression — Incorrect. Major depressive disorder is a period of depressed mood and/or loss of interest or pleasure in most activities, with tiredness, feelings of worthlessness and thoughts of death. Mohan does withdraw from people, but his main problem is fear and apprehension, not low mood.
NCERT (2025-26): “Anxiety Disorders … Everyone has worries and fears. The term anxiety is usually defined as a diffuse, vague, very unpleasant feeling of fear and apprehension. The anxious individual also shows combinations of the following symptoms: rapid heart rate, shortness of breath, diarrhoea, loss of appetite, fainting, dizziness, sweating, sleeplessness, frequent urination and tremors. There are many types of anxiety disorders (see Table 4.1). They include generalised anxiety disorder, which consists of prolonged, vague, unexplained and intense fears that are not attached to any particular object. The symptoms include worry and apprehensive feelings about the future; hypervigilance, which involves constantly scanning the environment for dangers. It is marked by motor tension, as a result of which the person is unable to relax, is restless, and visibly shaky and tense.…” “Anxiety Disorders … Another type of anxiety disorder is panic disorder, which consists of recurrent anxiety attacks in which the person experiences intense terror. A panic attack denotes an abrupt surge of intense anxiety rising to a peak when thoughts of a particular stimuli are present. Such thoughts occur in an unpredictable manner.…” |