Anxiety Disorders and Specific Phobias Lecture Review

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts related to anxiety disorders, fear, panic, and specific phobias from the lecture notes.

Anxiety

A complex blend of unpleasant emotions and cognitions, often including a physiological and behavioral component, characterized by a general feeling of apprehension about possible future danger.

Fear

A basic emotion involving an alarm reaction that occurs in the presence of immediate danger or immediate threat, activating the fight or flight response.

Panic Attack

A mobilization of the fear response in the absence of actual threat, where physical reactions mimic a bear attacking, even if no danger is present.

Fight or Flight Response

An incredibly adaptive response to real danger, involving the activation of the autonomic nervous system, especially the sympathetic nervous system.

Neuroticism

A prominence or disposition to experience negative mood states, serving as an underlying risk factor (diathesis) for multiple psychological issues.

Limbic System

A brain system highly involved in fear and anxiety disorders, particularly in emotion regulation.

Amygdala

Often considered the central brain region for anxiety disorders, responsible for detecting threats and activating fear responses; overactivity is associated with heightened anxiety and fear.

Hippocampus

A brain region heavily involved in memory formation, especially emotional memories, helping to contextualize experiences; persistent dysfunction can contribute to prolonged anxiety.

Hypothalamus

A brain region involved in anxiety, central to regulating the autonomic nervous system and physiological responses like sweating and heart rate.

Neurotransmitters in Anxiety

Chemicals like norepinephrine, GABA, and serotonin that are heavily implicated in anxiety disorders due to their role in regulating stress response and emotional stability; imbalances or dysfunctions can contribute to anxiety.

Lack of Control (Anxiety Risk Factor)

A risk factor for anxiety where individuals feel their environments are outside their control, and they lack agency over what happens in their life.

Classical Conditioning (in Anxiety)

A learning process useful for understanding how anxiety can be initially acquired and then generalized to other situations.

Operant Conditioning (in Anxiety)

A learning process helpful for understanding how anxiety-related behaviors (like avoidance) can be shaped and maintained over time, taking on a life of their own.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT)

A broad category of psychological treatments for anxiety disorders that target cognitions, behaviors, feelings, emotions, and physiological responses.

Exposure Therapy

A highly effective treatment for anxiety disorders where individuals are gradually exposed to feared situations or objects, leading to habituation and new learning that the feared outcome doesn't occur.

Specific Phobia

A strong and persistent fear triggered by the presence of something specific (e.g., animals, flying, heights), leading to significant distress or impairment and often avoidance, which is out of proportion to the actual danger.

Blood-Injury-Injection Phobia

A specific phobia characterized by extreme fears related to blood, injuries, or injections, often leading to a unique physiological response of dramatic heart rate decrease and fainting, rather than typical sympathetic activation.

Information Processing (in Phobias)

The way individuals with anxiety selectively attend to, interpret, or remember information, often with a bias towards threat, contributing to the maintenance of phobias.

Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia)

Characterized by debilitating and disabling fears of one or more social situations, often stemming from a fear of negative evaluation, scrutiny by others, or acting in an embarrassing or humiliating way.

Fear of Negative Evaluation

A core component of social anxiety disorder, where individuals are intensely worried about being judged or critically assessed by others in social or performance-based situations.

Comorbidity (in Anxiety Disorders)

The co-occurrence of multiple psychological disorders; for example, social anxiety disorder has high rates of comorbidity with other anxiety disorders, depression, and substance use disorders.

Self-Medication Hypothesis

The idea that individuals with social anxiety may use substances to numb their anxiety and facilitate social interactions, contributing to comorbidity with substance use disorders.