For several weeks, a woman has carried a persistent sense that something bad or catastrophic is about to happen, though she cannot say what, or to whom, or when — it is not tied to any particular object, situation, or event, just a sustained, uneasy sense of dread hanging over everything. What is this?

This is anxious foreboding: a persistent sense that something bad or catastrophic is about to happen, with the anticipated misfortune vague or unspecified rather than a named, particular fear, and not reliably tied to any specific object or situation, distinguishing it from a phobic pattern. It is not a panic attack, which is a discrete, rapidly peaking episode rather than this sustained background sense of dread over several weeks. It is not a phobia, since a phobia has a specific, identifiable trigger, which is exactly what is absent here. And it is not a delusion of persecution, since the feeling remains a vague sense of foreboding rather than a fixed, false belief about a specific threat.