Anxiety Disorders

Components of Anxiety

  • Subjective feelings
  • Physiological Sensations and Perceptions
  • Cognitive
  • Behavioral Responses

Panic Disorder

  • Personal experience of multiple uncued panic attacks
    • Panic attacks- Sudden Inexplicable fear
    • Last for several minutes to over an hour
  • More common in women
    • Prevalence of .7-3%

Agoraphobia

  • Greek definition literally means “fear of the Market place”
  • Fear of being in a place which it would be difficult to escape quickly or without embarrassment
  • May co-occur with panic disorder

Theories of Panic Disorders

  • Biological
    • Dysregulation in the locus cerulus, which connects the limbic system
  • Cognitive
    • People attend more closely and misinterpret bodily sensations and symptoms
    • ie. Thinking you are having a panic attack while working out
  • Behavioral
    • Conditioned avoidance response occurs when one association’s certain situations with a panic attack

Separation Anxiety Disorder

  • Excessive fear at being apart from principal caregiver
  • Interferes with the school as well as home life
  • Often related to the discovery of death or divorce
  • Also results from excessive dependence on parents
  • Treated through combo of meds and gradual exposure

OCD

  • Presence of obsessions, compulsions, or both
  • Obsessions
    • Persistent and unwanted thoughts
  • Compulsions
    • Irresistible, habitual, repetitive actions
  • Prevalence
    • 1-3% among sexes
  • Treated with antidepressants and/or exposure

Hoarding Disorder

  • Persistent difficulty of discarding or parting with items due to a perceived need to save the items and distress with discarding them
  • May also include tendency to excessively acquire additional items that are not needed to no available space

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

  • State of perpetual worry for no apparent reason, typically over a situation out of one’s control
  • Worries most occur over a long period and daily
    • Roughly for 6 months
  • Prevalence
    • 4% in women

PTSD

  • Exposure to a traumatic event that leads to:
    • Re-experiencing the event through nightmares or flashbacks
    • Avoidance of stimuli associated with events
    • Emotional and social distancing
    • Hyper alertness, anxiety, and guilt
  • Predictors of PTSD
    • Proximity
    • Available social support
    • Heightened anxiety prior to a traumatic event
    • Dysfunctional coping styles
    • Genetic predisposition to the disorder

Anxiety Medications

  • Target GABA
    • inhibitory transmitter that operates in the parasympathetic system
  • Some anxiety disorders are treated with certain antidepressants