Chapter 6: Anxiety, Obsessions, and Related Disorders

Sixty practice vocabulary flashcards covering anxiety disorders, phobias, panic disorder, OCD, and related conditions based on lecture notes.

Specific Phobia

A persistent and disproportionate fear of a specific object or situation that presents little to no danger and leads to a great deal of avoidance.

Blood-injection-injury phobia

A type of phobia characterized by the sight of blood or injury, which typically results in a drop in blood pressure and potential fainting.

Psychoanalytic Viewpoint of Phobias

The theory that phobias represent a defense against anxiety stemming from repressed impulses from the id, displaced onto a symbolic external object.

Vicarious Conditioning

The process by which fear is transmitted from one person to another through the observation of phobic behavior in others.

Evolutionary Preparedness

The biological readiness to more easily acquire fears of certain objects or situations that may have posed threats to early ancestors.

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)

Disabling fears of one or more social situations where an individual may be exposed to scrutiny or potential negative evaluation by others.

Behavioral Inhibition

A temperament-related risk factor for social anxiety disorder that involves the tendency to withdraw from unfamiliar situations.

Cognitive Restructuring

A therapy technique where underlying automatic thoughts are identified and challenged through logical reanalysis.

D-cycloserine

A medication that acts on the serotonin system and is used in conjunction with exposure therapy to enhance gains for specific phobias and SAD.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent, unexpected panic attacks and at least $1 ext{ month}$ of persistent concern about having another attack.

Nocturnal Panic

Panic attacks that happen during relaxation or while a person is asleep.

Agoraphobia

The avoidance of public spaces or crowded places where escape might be difficult or embarrassing.

Amygdala (in Panic Disorder)

The part of the fear network where increased activity stimulates the locus coeruleus and connects to the prefrontal cortex.

Locus Coeruleus

A brain area that is stimulated by the amygdala and is involved in the physiological symptoms of a panic attack.

Hippocampus (in Anxiety)

A brain region thought to generate conditioned anxiety and involved in the learned avoidance associated with agoraphobia.

Panic Provocation Procedures

Biological challenge procedures, such as inhaling carbon dioxide, that provoke panic attacks at higher rates in people with panic disorder.

Interoceptive Cues

Internal bodily sensations that become conditioned stimuli for panic attacks during an interoceptive conditioning process.

Exteroceptive Cues

External environmental cues that can be associated with panic attacks through classical conditioning.

Anxiety Sensitivity

A trait-like belief that certain bodily sensations, such as a racing heart, may have harmful consequences.

Safety Behaviors

Actions taken prior to or during a panic attack to prevent catastrophe, which can mistakenly reinforce the belief that the behavior prevented a disaster.

Panic Control Treatment (PCT)

A protocol where clients are educated about anxiety and panic, taught breathing control, and learn to logically analyze their thoughts.

Anxiolytics

Medications from the benzodiazepine category, such as alprazolam and clonazepam, used for the relief of anxiety symptoms.

SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors)

A class of antidepressants widely prescribed for panic disorder and social anxiety as they do not cause physiological dependence.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Chronic, excessive, and uncontrollable worry about many different aspects of life that lasts for at least $6 ext{ months}$.

GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid)

An inhibitory neurotransmitter that is often functionally deficient in people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone (CRH)

A hormone activated by stress that stimulates the release of ACTH and affects brain areas mediating behavioral inhibition.

Applied Muscle Relaxation

A behavioral treatment technique for GAD that involves training individuals in muscle relaxation to reduce somatic symptoms.

Obsessions

Persistent and recurrent intrusive thoughts, images, or impulses that are experienced as disturbing, inappropriate, and uncontrollable.

Compulsions

Overt repetitive behaviors or covert mental rituals performed in an attempt to neutralize obsessive thoughts.

Mowrer’s Two-Process Theory

A learning theory explaining that neutral stimuli become associated with fear through classical conditioning and compulsions are reinforced by anxiety reduction.

Thought-Action Fusion

The cognitive distortion that simply thinking about an action is morally equivalent to doing it or increases its likelihood.

Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC)

A brain area involved in regulating behavior and processing negative affect that is often overactive in people with OCD.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)

A brain region involved in error monitoring and fear processing that shows overactivation in individuals with OCD.

Basal Ganglia

Brain structures involved in a feedback loop with the OFC that can create an overactive link associated with OCD symptoms.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

A behavioral treatment for OCD that involves intense exposure to feared conditions and preventing the client from engaging in rituals.

Ego Dystonic

A term describing thoughts or impulses that are felt to be repugnant, distressing, and inconsistent with one's self-concept.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)

An obsession with perceived or imagined flaws in appearance to the point of clinically significant distress or social impairment.

Local Processing Bias

The tendency in BDD to focus on extracting detailed features of a face rather than global, holistic processing.

Hoarding Disorder

A condition where individuals have extreme difficulty discarding possessions, which may be neurologically distinct from OCD.

Trichotillomania

A disorder characterized by compulsive hair pulling, usually preceded by tension and followed by a sense of relief or pleasure.

Displacement Activities

Evolutionary behaviors like grooming or nesting that resemble the compulsive rituals found in OCD.

Dominance Hierarchies

An evolutionary social arrangement among primates that may serve as a by-product for the development of social fears.

Interoceptive Exposure

The deliberate exposure to feared internal sensations, such as increased heart rate, to treat panic disorder.

Mindfulness

Awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally to reduce worry.

Socratic Questioning

A technique used by therapists in cognitive restructuring to help clients challenge unhelpful or unrealistic thoughts.

Public Speaking Anxiety

The performance-only subtype of Social Anxiety Disorder and its most common form.

Pre-event drinking

A coping strategy used by significantly many people with SAD to manage anticipatory anxiety before social situations.

Habituation

The process by which a person’s response to a feared stimulus decreases through repeated and prolonged exposure.

Cognitive Biases for Threatening Information

The tendency of anxious people to interpret ambiguous information negatively and expect bad future outcomes.

Pathological Doubt

A frequent theme of obsessions in OCD, often involving uncertainty about whether a ritual or task was performed correctly.

Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis

An important brain area involved in mediating behavioral inhibition and generalized anxiety.

Buspirone

A medication for GAD that is effective but takes longer to work than benzodiazepines and does not cause dependence.

Clomipramine

An antidepressant that affects the serotonin system and is frequently used to reduce the intensity of OCD symptoms.

Tricyclic Antidepressants

A category of medications used to treat panic disorder that alleviate comorbid depressive symptoms.

In vivo exposure

A form of exposure therapy conducted through direct, real-life contact with the feared object or situation.

Imaginal exposure

A therapy technique where a patient is asked to visualize or imagine their feared obsession or situation.