Preface

As the rates of mental illness rise worldwide, it becomes even more vital that the fields that study the etiology and amelioration of mental disorders develop a more complete understanding of the etiology of psychopathology and develop better methods for its amelioration. This collection brings together, from a diverse set of international scientists, a valuable set of perspectives on recent developments in the various areas central to mental health.

Some contributions deal with common emotional disorders, specifically anxiety and affective disturbances. Anxiety will be the leading psychiatric disease in the near future, according to the World Health Organization, bypassing depression. Other contributions give new suggestions on how anxiety and affective disorders influence our daily lives.

In this book, we think that the contributions of clinicians and academics will help in understanding and sharing the "real world" of psychiatry, and we look forward to further developments in this form of knowledge dissemination.

As editors of this volume, we have been aided by the superb staff at IntechOpen. To them we offer our thanks. The dissemination of knowledge without charge to scholars via the internet is an important contribution to the advancement of knowledge. This development is still in its early years, but is destined to have a major impact on all fields of intellectual endeavor.

> **Robert Woolfolk** Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

**Federico Dubano** Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy

Azienda Socio-Sanitaria Territoriale Melegnano e della Martesana, Melzo Hospital, Melzo, Italy

**II**

**Chapter 8 115**

**Chapter 9 129**

**Chapter 10 143**

Anxiety: The Dizziness of Freedom—The Developmental Factors of Anxiety

Association between Bipolar Affective Disorder and Periodontal Diseases

Panic Attacks and Panic Disorder

*by Peter Slater*

*by Dimitar Bonevski and Andromahi Naumovska*

as Seen through the Lens of Psychoanalytic Thinking

*by Fernando Oliveira Costa, Fabiano Cunha and Rafael Lima*

**1**

Section 1

Psychopathology:

An International,

Interdisciplinary

Perspective
