The Scholar: Rachel Goodman

The Project: Anxiety Over Time: The Meaning Has Changed but the Stigma Has Not

The Essential Question: How was anxiety diagnosed, treated, and viewed historically, and what does that reveal about the way we diagnose, treat, and view anxiety today?

An Unexpected Finding: My favorite part about this project is now being able to tell people and provide examples of why there should not be a stigma around anxiety. Something surprising that I learned during this project is how many people are misdiagnosed with anxiety. There are so many factors that cause a feeling of anxiety but are not actually an anxiety disorder and these two get confused very often and this has a lot to do with medication. The use of medication for anxiety is causing a lot more bad than most people would expect.