Anxiety Disorders Lecture Notes

Flashcards on Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety

Uncomfortable but adaptive emotional response

Anxiety Disorders

Different from ‘everyday anxiety’ in that the anxiety is disproportionate to the situation that elicited the anxious response.

Physiological Component of Anxiety

Heightened level of arousal and physiological activation.

Cognitive Component of Anxiety

Subjective perception of anxious arousal and associated cognitive processes

Behavioural Component of Anxiety

‘Safety’ behaviours avoidance.

Separation Anxiety

Anxious arousal and worry about losing contact with and proximity to other people, typically significant others.

Specific Phobia

Fear and avoidance of objects or situations that do not present any real danger.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Fear and avoidance of social situations due to possible negative evaluation from others.

Panic Disorder

Recurrent panic attacks involving a sudden onset of physiological symptoms accompanied by terror and feelings of impending doom.

Agoraphobia

Fear of being in public places or situations where a person cannot escape if experiencing feelings of anxiety.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Persistent, uncontrollable anxiety and worry about everyday life events with no obvious reason.

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Separation Anxiety Disorder

Developing inappropriate and excessive fear or anxiety concerning separation from those to whom the individual is attached.

Specific Phobias

Unwarranted fears caused by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation

Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia

Getting shot, donating blood, going to the doctor or dentist, getting a needle

Situational Phobia

enclosed spaces, elevators, planes

Animal Phobia

insects, dogs, snakes

Natural Environment Phobia

storms, water, heights

Other Phobias

choking, vomiting, clowns

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Specific Phobias

Marked fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Fearful or anxious about or avoidant of social interactions and situations that involve the possibility of being negatively evaluated by others.

Social Anxiety Disorder - Performance Type

Speaking or performing in public

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Social Anxiety Disorder

Marked fear or anxiety about one or more social situations in which the individual is exposed to possible scrutiny by others.

Behavioral Theories of Phobias and Social Anxiety

Theories about how someone develops phobias or social anxiety considers that the disorders are ‘learned’

Avoidance Conditioning

Reactions are learned avoidance responses that develop via classical and operant conditioning

Modeling

Person can learn fear through imitating the reaction of others (vicarious learning).

Prepared Learning

Some fears may reflect classical conditioning, but only to stimuli to which an organism is physiologically prepared to be sensitive.

Social Skills Deficits

Inappropriate behaviour or a lack of social skills is the cause of social anxiety.

Cognitive Theories of Specific Phobias and SAD

People’s thought processes can serve as a diathesis and thoughts can maintain a phobia or anxiety.

Cognitive-Behavioral Models of SAD

Attentional bias to focus on negative social information

Post-Event Processing (PEP)

A form of rumination about previous experiences and responses to these situations, especially experiences involving other people that did not turn out well.

Biological Theories of Specific Phobias and SAD

Greater activity in two areas associated with negative emotional responses: the amygdala and the insula

Autonomic Nervous System Lability

Labile, or jumpy, individuals have autonomic systems that are readily aroused by a wide range of stimuli.

Psychoanalytic Theories of Specific Phobias and SAD

Phobias are a defense against the anxiety produced by repressed id impulses.

Panic Attack Symptoms

Rapid or laboured breathing, heart palpitations, nausea and chest pain

Depersonalization

a feeling of being outside one’s body

Derealization

a feeling of the world’s not being real

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Panic Disorder

Recurrent unexpected panic attacks.

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Agoraphobia

Marked fear or anxiety about two (or more) of the following five situations:

Agoraphobic Situation Example

Using public transportation

Agoraphobic Situation Example

Being in open spaces

Agoraphobic Situation Example

Being in enclosed places

Agoraphobic Situation Example

Standing in line or being in a crowd

Agoraphobic Situation Example

Being outside of the home alone

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities

Systematic Desensitization

Create an anxiety hierarchy rating of fears.

Effectiveness of Systematic Desensitization

Clinical and experimental evidence indicates that this technique is effective in eliminating, or at least reducing, phobias.

Treatment for Blood and Injection Phobias

Encouraged to tense rather than relax their muscles when confronting the fearsome situation

Social Skills Training

Technique used to help people with SAD who may not know what to do or say in social situations.

Behavioral Therapy for GAD

Intensive relaxation training to relax when beginning to feel tense.

Psychoanalytic therapies

Attempt to uncover the repressed conflicts believed to underlie the extreme fear and avoidance characteristic of these disorders.