psych 1101 module 48

When brain danger detection system becomes hyperactive

greater risk of anxiety disorder

anxiety > shyness is what we call it

three disorders that involve anxiety

OCD, PTSD, and somatic symptom disorder

anxiety disorder

psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety

examples that anxiety is becoming a problem

• Staying home avoid anxious feelings, but maladaptive

• Avoiding others prevented from learning to cope and left him feeling lonely

generalized anxiety

 in which a person is, for no obvious reason, continually tense and uneasy

panic disorder

 in which a person experiences panic attacks—sudden episodes of intense dread—and fears the next attack

specific phobias

in which a person is intensely and irrationally afraid of something.

generalized anxiety disorder real definition

an anxiety disorder in which a person continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal

2/3 women who have

generalized anxiety they worry continually, often jittery, agitated and sleep deprived, concentration suffer

symptoms of generalized anxiety

• autonomic nervous system arousal may leak out through furrowed brows, twitching eyelids, trembling, perspiration, or fidgeting.

• could be dizziness, sweating palms, and heart palpitations

generalized anxiety could be considered

• free floating > not linked to a specific stressor or threat

• Accompanied by depressed mood

• Age 50 becomes rare

• Could lead to physical problems like high blood pressure

panic attack

 a minutes-long episode of intense fear that something horrible is about to happen

Irregular heartbeat, chest pains, shortness of breath, choking, trembling, or dizzines

may accompany the panic

panic disorder

an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable minutes long episodes of intense dread in which a person may experience terror and accompanying chest pain, chocking or other frightening sensations; often followed by worry over a possible next attack

3% of people have this

• these anxiety tornados strike suddenly, wreak havoc, and disappear, but are not forgotten

panic disorder could lead to

agoraphobia > fear or avoidance of public situations from which escape might be difficult

Nicotine is a simulant, and smokers have double chance

of having a panic disorder

specific phobias

an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear, and avoidance of a specific object, or situation

examples of specific phobias are

animals, blood, insects, heights, enclosed places

 A strong fear becomes a specific phobia if

it provokes a compelling but irrational desire to avoid the dreaded object or situation

obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

 a disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and actions (compulsions) or both

• Unwanted, seemingly unending

• Our lives filled with little rehearsals and fussy behaviors

• Crosses line when they persistently interfere with everyday life and cause distress

• About 2% cross the line

• Compulsive behaviors are response to those thoughts

OCD is more common

 among teens and young adults than older people

A 40-year follow-up study of 144 Swedes diagnosed with the disorder found that, for most, the obsessions and compulsions had gradually lessened,

 though only 1 in 5 had completely recovered

Some people experience other OCD-related disorders

hoarding disorder (cluttering one’s space with acquired possessions one can’t part with),

body dysmorphic disorder (preoccupation with perceived body defects),

trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder),

excoriation (skin-picking) disorder.

table of common obsessions and compulsions among children and adolescents with obsessive compulsive disorder

Soldiers experience this, out of 104,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, 25% were diagnosed with psychological disorder, the most frequent was

PTSD

posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

 a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, hypervigilance, avoidance of trauma related stimuli, social withdrawl, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience

Survivors of terror, torture, rape, earthquakes, and refugee displacement have also exhibited

PTSD

hallmark symptoms of PTSD is

recurring, vivid, distressing memories and nightmares

Half trauma victims report

posttraumatic growth

Why do some 5 to 10 percent of people develop PTSD after a traumatic event while others do not

• factor is amount of emotional distress

Influences PTSD development

 more sensitive emotion processing limbic system floods their bodies with stress hormones, genes and gender matter, twins are commonly share PTSD risk factors, women experience PTSD more than men

somatic symptom disorder

a psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause

somatic means

relating to the body

symptoms of somatic symptom disorder

complaints vomiting, dizziness, blurred vision, difficulty swallowing,  severe and prolonged pain.

illness anxiety disorder

 a disorder in which a person interrupts normal physical sensations as a symptom of a disease

Cultural context has big effect on people's physical complaints and how they explain them

China anxiety is most common, more sensitive and willing to report

people with this relatively common disorder interpret normal sensations (a stomach cramp today, a headache tomorrow) as symptoms of a

dreaded disease

Sigmund Freud proposed that beginning in childhood

people repress intolerable impulses, ideas, and feelings. Freud believed that this submerged mental energy sometimes leaks out in odd symptoms, such as anxious hand washing.

Most psychologists instead embrace three modern perspectives for understanding anxiety related disorders

conditioning, cognition, and biology

conditioning

Through classical conditioning, our fear responses can become linked with formerly neutral objects and events

used lab rats to

understand the link between learning and anxiety, used electric shocks

• Likewise, anxious or traumatized people learn to associate their anxiety with certain cues

58 percent of those with social anxiety disorder experienced their disorder after a traumatic event, Anxiety is more likely to develop when

bad events happen unpredictably and uncontrollably

stimulus generalizations

occurs when a person experiences a fear-provoking event and later develops a fear of similar events

reinforcement

 helps maintain learned fears and anxieties, anything that enables us to avoid or escape a feared situation can reinforce maladaptive behaviors

cognition

• influences our feelings of anxiety, but so do our thoughts, memories, interpretations, and expectations

• We humans similarly learn fears by observing others

Nearly all monkeys raised in the wild fear snakes, yet lab-raised monkeys do not. Surely, most wild monkeys do not actually suffer snake bites. Do they learn their fear through observation?

After repeatedly observing their parents or peers refusing to reach for food in the presence of a snake, the young monkeys developed a similar strong fear of snakes that persisted when retested three months later

9 in 10 worries proved groundless, these people tend to be hypervigilant, more often interpret stimuli as

threatening

Anxiety is especially common when people cannot switch off such

intrusive thoughts and helpless

A monkey reacts more strongly to stress if its close biological relatives are

anxiously reactive

If twin has an anxiety disorder, the other is at risk, if separated when growing up

twins can still develop same specific phobias

One research team identified 17 gene variations associated with

typical anxiety disorder symptoms

Some genes influence disorders by regulating brain levels of neurotransmitters

 These include serotonin, which influences sleep, mood, and attending to threats

glutamate which heightens activity in the brain's alarm center

 A history of wartime trauma or child abuse can leave long-term epigenetic marks, these molecular tags attach to our

 chromosomes and turn certain genes on or off.

Traumatic fear-learning experiences can leave tracks in the brain, creating fear circuits within the

amygdala

Brain scans of people with OCD reveal elevated activity in specific brain areas during behaviors such as

compulsive hand washing, checking, organizing, or hoarding

anterior cingulate cortex

 a brain region that monitors our actions and checks for errors, is often especially hyperactive

• Some antidepressant drugs dampen this fear circuit activity and its associated obsessive-compulsive behavior

natural selection

• We seem biologically prepared to fear threats faced by our ancestors.

• Those fearless about these occasional threats were less likely to survive and leave descendants

• It is easy to condition and hard to extinguish fears of such “evolutionarily relevant” stimuli

• Some of our modern fears can also have an evolutionary explanation