Anxiety Disorders

What is an anxiety disorder?

Categorised by feelings of anxiety or fear, often about things that will happen in the future

What are some common symptoms of people who have an anxiety disorder?

• Physiological reactions such as:

  • Increased heart rate

  • Stomach problems

What is the anxiety disorder that we study?

Specific phobias

What are specific phobias?

• Characterised by a strong, persistent and irrational fear of an object

  The fear is disproportionate to the risk the object, situation or activity presents

• A person will take extreme measures to avoid contact it

• It is considered clinical when it interferes with everyday life

What is the DSM 5 classification for specific phobias?

• The phobic object or situation always provokes immediate fear or anxiety

• The phobic object is actively avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety

• The fear is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the phobic object or situation

• The fear has to last 6 months or more

What are the strengths of categorising specific phobias?

• Practical applications from diagnosis- by classifying the disorder we can treat is effectively, for example through systematic desensitisation or flooding

  • Systematic desensitisation can be used to treat phobias- it aims to replace a faulty association between the phobic object and the fear response which is found to be 75% effective

What are the weaknesses of classifying specific phobias?

• Subjective- dependent on the clinicians interpretation as well as the self report of the person as to how they are experiencing the phobia

  • Can lead to misdiagnosis

• Co-morbidity

  • Refers to more than one disorder that co-exists along the primary diagnosis

  • Specific phobias are rarely seen in medical clinical settings in the absence of psychopathological disorder

  • Makes them harder to treat and to isolate the symptoms/behaviour to specific phobias only

• Medicalising normal life

  • Diagnosis suggests the fear is irrational

  • Many fears may be rational like heights

  • Studies show that this is an evolutionary trait that we carry for survival