Chapter 6: Psychopathology: Anxiety and Stressor-Related Problems

A complete set of vocabulary flashcards covering the definitions, theories, and treatments of various anxiety and stressor-related disorders including phobias, GAD, OCD, and PTSD.

Anxiety Disorder

An excessive or aroused state characterized by feelings of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear that are out of proportion to the threat and disrupt daily living.

Specific Phobia

An excessive, unreasonable, and persistent fear triggered by a specific object or situation, leading to a set of avoidance responses and driven by dysfunctional phobic beliefs.

Social Anxiety Disorder

A condition distinguished by a severe and persistent fear of social or performance situations in which the individual may be scrutinized or negatively evaluated by others.

Panic Disorder

A disorder characterized by recurrent unexpected panic attacks and persistent concern ($1$ month or more) about additional attacks or their consequences.

Agoraphobia

Marked fear or anxiety about situations where escape might be difficult or help unavailable, such as public transportation, open spaces, or being in a crowd.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

A pervasive condition with continual apprehension and anxiety about future events leading to chronic uncontrollable worrying

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

A disorder involving intrusive, disturbing thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behavior patterns (compulsions) performed to prevent a negative outcome.

Acute Stress Disorder (ASD)

Symptoms similar to PTSD that occur following trauma exposure but have a shorter duration, lasting from $3$ days to $1$ month.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A disorder resulting from extreme trauma, characterized by intrusive symptoms, avoidance, negative changes in cognition and mood, and increased arousal.

Biological Preparedness

A Etiology for Specific Phobias : An evolutionary concept suggesting humans are predisposed to quickly learn to fear stimuli that were hazardous to ancestors, such as snakes or heights.

Non-associative fear acquisition

Aetiology for Specific Phobias :suggesting that fear of biologically relevant stimuli develops naturally and that adult phobias represent a failure of these fears to habituate.

Disease-avoidance model

Phobia Aetiology : A model suggesting many animals acquire disgust-relevance by spreading disease, possessing slimy features, or signaling contamination (e.g., rats, maggots, or snakes).

Anxiety Sensitivity

Aetiology for Panic and Agoraphobia : The fear of anxiety symptoms cause of beliefs that such symptoms have harmful consequences, Eg thinking a rapid heartbeat predicts a heart attack.

Catastrophic Misinterpretation

Aetiology for Panic and Agoraphobia : A cognitive theory suggesting panic attacks are triggered when individuals interpret ambiguous bodily sensations as life-threatening.

Catastrophizing

A step-by-step cognitive process often seen in chronic worriers where they anticipate increasingly disastrous consequences from a single event.

Intolerance of Uncertainty, perfectionism, responsibility for outcomes, poor problem-solving confidence

A dispositional characteristic of worriers associated with GAD, involving a negative reaction to uncertain or ambiguous situations.

Thought-Action Fusion (TAF)

Aetiology for OCD: The belief that simply having an unpleasant or unacceptable thought can directly cause the events Eg thinking of a car crash may cause

Mental Contamination

Aetiology for OCD: The experience of extreme feelings of dirtiness provoked without physical contact, often caused by images, memories, or violations such as emotional abuse.

Mood-as-input hypothesis

A theory by MacDonald & Davey ($2005$) suggesting that individuals with OCD use their negative mood as a signal that their goals have not been met, causing them to persevere in rituals.

Exposure & Ritual Prevention (EPR)

A common treatment for OCD involving graded exposure to distress-triggering thoughts followed by behaviors designed to prevent compulsive rituals.

Mental Defeat

A frame of mind where trauma victims process information negatively, see themselves as helpless victims, and believe the trauma has permanently changed their lives.

Dual Representation Theory

A theory by Brewin ($2001$) viewing PTSD as a hybrid disorder involving Verbally Accessible Memory (VAM) and Situationally Accessible Memory (SAM) systems.

Comorbid

The co-occurrence of two or more disorders in the same individual, such as GAD and major depression or panic disorder and situational phobias.

Interoceptive Exposure

A CBT technique for panic disorder used to reduce the fear of harmless bodily sensations by deliberately inducing those sensations.

Post-event processing

A cognitive factor in social anxiety where individuals engage in excessive and critical review of their performance after a social interaction has ended.