Abnormal Psychology Chapter 5: Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive, Trauma, and Stressor-Related Disorders

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from Abnormal Psychology 9th Edition Chapter 5 on Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive, Trauma, and Stressor-Related Disorders.

Fight-or-Flight Response

A set of physical and psychological responses that help an individual fight a threat or flee from it, resulting from the activation of the autonomic nervous system and the adrenal-cortical system controlled by the hypothalamus.

Cortisol

A stress hormone released by the adrenal glands during the fight-or-flight response.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent unexpected panic attacks, leading to persistent worry and/or avoidance.

Panic Attacks

Episodes of intense anxiety that cause physical sensations of fear and psychological symptoms, including fear of dying or losing control.

Anxiety Sensitivity

The unfounded belief that bodily symptoms have harmful consequences.

Interoceptive Awareness

A heightened awareness of bodily cues.

Interoceptive Conditioning

A process where bodily cues that occurred at the beginning of previous panic attacks become conditioned stimuli signaling new attacks.

Separation Anxiety Disorder

Developmentally inappropriate and excessive distress and fear when separated from primary caregivers, lasting at least 4 weeks in children/adolescents or 6 months in adults, causing significant impairment.

Behavioral Inhibition

A fearful temperament associated with avoidance and withdrawal from novel situations.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Persistent, uncontrollable worry about most things including minor everyday events, accompanied by symptoms such as restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbance.

GABA Receptors

Receptors that keep neurons from firing; a deficiency in these receptors leads to excessive neuron firing and chronic, diffuse symptoms of anxiety.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety in social situations driven by fear of being rejected, judged, or humiliated in public, leading to avoidance of social and/or performance situations.

Specific Phobias

Unreasonable or irrational fears of specific objects or situations lasting 6 months or more, where stimuli almost always provoke fear, leading to avoidance or enduring with intense fear.

Agoraphobia

An anxiety disorder characterized by fear of places where escape or getting help might be difficult if anxious, or fear of embarrassing oneself if symptoms are noticed.

Prepared Classical Conditioning

The conditioning of fear to certain objects or situations that carries an evolutionary basis.

Applied Tension Technique

A behavioral treatment technique for phobias that increases blood pressure and heart rate, preventing people from fainting when confronted with a feared object.

Obsessions

Thoughts, images, ideas, or urges that are persistent, intrusive, uncontrollable, unwanted, and cause significant anxiety or distress.

Compulsions

Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that an individual feels compelled to perform, often aimed at reducing anxiety brought on by obsessions.

Hair-Pulling Disorder (Trichotillomania)

An OCD-related disorder marked by recurrent pulling out of hair resulting in noticeable hair loss.

Skin-Picking Disorder (Excoriation)

An OCD-related disorder involving recurrently picking scabs or places on the skin, creating significant lesions that often become infected and cause scars.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder

An OCD-related disorder where individuals are excessively preoccupied with a part of their body that they believe is defective, but that others see as normal or only slightly unusual.

Olfactory Reference Disorder

An OCD-related disorder characterized by the belief that one has a foul odor that others can smell.

Hoarding

Difficulty getting rid of items that leads to an accumulation of things cluttering and congesting active living areas, commonly associated with poor insight.

Exposure and Response Prevention

A cognitive-behavioral treatment for OCD that exposes the client to their obsession or fear while preventing the compulsive behavior.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A disorder resulting from direct experience, witnessing, learning of, or repeated extreme exposure to details of a traumatic event, marked by reexperiencing, persistent avoidance, negative mood/cognition changes, and hypervigilance.

Dissociation

A condition in which different facets of a person's sense of self or consciousness become disconnected from one another.

Acute Stress Disorder

A trauma-related disorder in response to PTSD-like stressors, diagnosed when symptoms arise within 1 month of exposure and last no longer than 4 weeks.

Adjustment Disorder

A disorder where emotional and behavioral symptoms occur in response to a stressor of any severity without meeting the full criteria for acute stress disorder or PTSD.

Stress-Inoculation Therapy

A treatment for PTSD in which therapists teach clients skills to overcome problems that increase stress or result from PTSD.