Anxiety Attacks

[pipedope]

I am not qualified to do cave dives on scuba because I have not trained for that. The equipment, team organization and methods are very different.

I am thinking of getting at least a cavern cert and see if I want to do caves on scuba.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this man is a professional pipedope, please don't try this at home.

 

[divepsych]

Please visit my website for information on diver panic and techniques to control diver stress and anxiety/panic.

 

[PaulChristenson]

Please visit my website for information on diver panic and techniques to control diver stress and anxiety/panic.

It's alive....

 

[DocVikingo]

Hi Paul,

Even older. The original post was made on 06/27/03, while the last post prior to the current resurrection was 10/12/03.

Like rust, anxiety-mediated disorders never rest ; )

Regards,

DocVikingo

 

[divepsych]

Many divers experience panic or anxiety attacks while diving, but few meet the standard diagnostic criteria for Panic Disorder.

My wife and I did a study in 2000 on panic in over 12,000 divers. We had originally sought to determine what factors or combination of factors led to panic, but we were unable to determine that because the top three choices were "other", other, and other. The factor with the 4th highest relative risk ratio was hyperventilation. When I showed the findings to Dr. Peter Bennett at DAN, he agreed we could conclude nothing from our study as far as why divers panicked. The conclusions that we could make were published in Undersea Journal and presented at an UHMS meeting. You may download a pdf file of the paper from my website, which unfortunately is down tonight with a host server problem. It is supposed to be back up later tonight. www.divepsych.com

I have a whole notebook of narratives we gathered from "panic" divers in a follow up of the study that has not been published. They are each as different as the divers.

 

[DocVikingo]

QED

Regards,

DocVikingo

 

[RiverRat]

Wow! I remember this thread, 5 years damn! Started when I began diving. Glad to see you've compiled all of your research data! Anything that can help divers be safer is a good thing. Knowledge is power especially in this sport. It's interesting, I've compared your findings with my own personal "findings" as I've become a more experienced diver. I have many more dives under my belt now and much more training. It's getting late now but I'll look at your findings again when I'm not so tired.

 

[divepsych]

Again, thank you to all the divers who helped with this research.

 

[saijef]

ohhh just saw the dates on this one....did the anxiety thing get sorted??

 

[RiverRat]

ohhh just saw the dates on this one....did the anxiety thing get sorted??

Not sure if you're asking me or not. But if you are, yes, I'm much more comfortable in just about any environment than when I started out. I basically came to the conclusion that I have a tendancy to suffer from the "blue orb" condition on rare occasions. For some reason if I lose all visual reference in the water column my body/mind wants to make me a bit anxious. So I basically just stop and take a few deep breaths and I'm good to go. Anything to "break" the cycle works. It also seems from my experience, and from other data, that one can be the most comfortable diver, have thousands of dives under their belt, and for whatever reason one day your body/mind just says "this is freaking me out a bit". I'm sure CO2 plays a big part in this stuff as well. By training in many different environments from low/no vis, cold water, strong currents, night dives etc. I've conditioned myself to be comfortable and to get sorted out rather quickly when I'm not feeling right during a dive. Going for Divemaster, especially the physiology knowledge, was a big help aslo. There is nothing like being responsible for other divers that helps your confidence. I HAVE to keep it together so I can be there for the students. It's also good to observe OW students and there reactions during training. If you look at the Doctors graphs you can get a decent picture of diver's comfort levels as they gain more experience and go through more training. It really is all about the "Zen" thing underwater. But just like Martial arts, you can't get it without practice and conditioning. Of course there are exceptions like this kid we had in an OW class in the quarry. We toured him around the wall and both me and the Instructor were amazed. This kid was diving like he had 3000dives under his belt. Very relaxed, great buoyancy control, a natural for sure.