Anxiety Flashcards
What is anxiety?
- Classified as a pattern of frequent, persistent worry about a perceived threat in the environment.
- The threat is minor/non-existent yet perceived to individuals as highly threatening.
Differentiate between fear and anxiety.
- Fear is a response to a perceived imminent threat in the present.
- Anxiety is more focused on perceived anticipated threat in the future.
Define Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
- Characterised by unreasonable anxiety about multiple everyday events for the majority of days over a period of several months.
- Such as health, family and work.
State the symptoms of GAD.
- Muscular tension
- Sleep disturbance
- Difficulty concentrating
- Irritability
Define agoraphobia.
- Characterised by excessive fear or anxiety triggered by situations where escape or help may not be available.
- The person will be afraid of having specific negative outcomes such as panic attacks in public places.
What is specific phobia?
Characterised by showing excessive fear consistently when exposed to or in specific stimulus.
Explain Blood-Injection injury phobia.
- Excessive fear at the sight of blood or injection.
- Individuals with blood and needle phobias experience an increased heart rate, combined with a drop in blood pressure leading to fainting.
What is the GAD-7
- Generalised Anxiety Disorder Assessment.
- A screening test tool used to enable further referral to psychiatrist or counsellor.
- 7 items measuring the severity of anxiety on a scale from 0-3.
- 5/21 : Mild GAD
- 10/21 : Moderate GAD
- 15+ Severe GAD
What is the BIPI?
- Blood Injection Phobia Inventory.
- Self-report measure listing 18 possible situations to measure the severity of a specific phobia.
- For each situation they are asked to evaluate how often they experience 27 different cognitive, biological and behavioural reactions.
- Rated on a scale 0-3.
Explain the behavioural explanation of anxiety.
- Classical conditioning.
- Fears are learned when a neutral stimulus because associated with an unconditioned stimulus that naturally triggers a fear repose.
- Overtime the neutral stimulus becomes conditioned, eliciting fear on its own.
Describe Watson and Rayner’s example study on little Albert.
- Investigation was on a healthy 9 month old boy.
- Initially shown different stimuli such as a white rat, rabbit and cotton.
- Then white rat was accompanied by repetitive, loud noise of a hammer hitting a pole.
- Albert came to fear the white rat as he cried and trembled everytime he saw it
Explain the biological explanation of anxiety.
- We are born predisposed to fear certain objects.
- Certain environmental stimuli may pose survival threats and we are genetically inclined to avoid them.
- This fear tendency is passed down through generations.
Explain Ost et Al’s example study.
- Stated that blood phobia may be more heritable than other specific phobias as more blood phobics have reported having a sibling/parent with the same phobia.
- Study included 81 blood phobics and 59 injection phobics.
- 61% of blood phobics had a first-degree relative with the same phobia.
- Blood phobics were tested by watching a 30 minute silent surgery video until they looked away.
- Injection phobics were tested by undergoing 20 live steps until they refused (cleaning a fingertip to a fingertip prick)
- Conclusion was that there is a strong genetic link to these phobias.
Explain Freud’s psychodynamic explanation of anxiety.
- That fear and anxiety can result from the impulse of Id when its being denied or repressed as the Id and Superego are always in conflict.
- That phobias stem from unconscious, unresolved psychosexual conflicts as a defence mechanism developed by the Superego against the Id’s desire.
State the structures of personality.
- Id: Present at birth, seeks immediate gratification
- Ego: Develops by age 2, plans to fulfil needs rationally
- Superego: Develops between ages 3 and 5, embodies morality and conscience.
What are defence mechanisms?
Coping strategies used by the ego to resolve conflicts between the Id and the Superego, protecting the conscious mind from negative emotions.
State the psychosexual stages of development.
- Oral stage (0-18 months) : focus on mouth
- Anal stage (18m - 3yrs) : focus on anus
- Phallic stage (3-6 yrs) : focus on the genitals
- Latency stage (6yrs - puberty) : sexual feelings are dormant.
- Genital stage (puberty - adulthood) : focus on mature sexual relationships.
State Freud’s theory.
That between the ages of 3 and 6, male infants develop a strong attachment to their mothers, leading to jealous and anger towards the father
(known as the oedipus complex)
Explain Castration anxiety.
Involves a fear of castration as a potential punishment for the child’s desire.
Explain resolution through identification.
The child’s way of resolving these negative emotions by changing from competing with the father to wanting to become like the father.
Explain the unresolved complex.
If the oedipus complex remains unresolved negative emotions are repressed into the unconscious mind through the defence mechanism of repression.
Explain the superego development.
Once the oedipus complex is successfully resolved, the superego begins to develop which is responsible for incorporating social expectations and morality.
Explain Freud’s case study on little Hans. (7)
- Study about a 5 yr old Austrian boy who was suffering from a phobia of horses.
- His father referred the case to Freud and was the one who provided most of the evidence as Freud only met little Hans twice throughout the whole study.
- At age 3, Hans grew an intense interest towards his widdler and his mother threatened to cut it off, causing him to develop a fear of castration.
- Witnessed an incident were a horse fell and died, causing him too develop a fear of horses (specifically white horses)
- Conflict began when the father denied him the chance to sit with his mother in the parents bed.
- His father reported that Hans had two fantasies, one that he had several children with his mother and that the father was actually his grandfather, and that a plumber changed Hans’ widdler to a new, larger one.
- Freud suggested the fear/jealousy Hans felt towards his father was projected onto horses as their black nosebands could possibly symbolise his father’s moustache
Explain what systematic desensitisation is. (4)
- A way of reducing undesirable responses to particular situations, hence why it is an appropriate way to manage phobias,
- Assumes that nearly all behaviour is a conditioned response to stimuli environment and so if it was learnt then it could be unlearnt.
- A once frightening stimulus should become neutral and provoke no real anxiety.
- Reciprocal inhibition which states the impossibility of feeling two strong, opposing emotions simultaneously.
Explain the systematic desensitisation procedure.
- Patient is taught relaxation techniques like progressive muscle relaxation, visualisation or anti-anxiety drugs.
- The patient and therapist work together creating an anxiety hierarchy.
- The patient doesn’t move onto the next stage in the hierarchy until they report feeling no anxiety at their current stage.
What is CBT for anxiety disorders?
- CBT practitioner believe that anxiety and fear result from dysfunctional thinking patterns.
- Practitioners challenge unhelpful beliefs and find solutions to current problems rather than focusing on the past to explain behaviour.
- Attempt to disconfirm the person’s inaccurate beliefs about their feared stimuli through exposure with the aim of associating the fear with a new positive memory.
- Also use psychoeducation to teach people with phobias about the links between thoughts, emotions and behaviour while encouraging them to provide evidence for their negative thoughts.
What is applied tension?
- Reduces fainting in people with blood-injury-injection phobia.
- Involves applying tension to the muscles to increase blood pressure throughout certain areas.
- Client must tighten their arm, torso and leg muscles while sitting for 10-15 seconds, then release for 20-30 and repeat 5 times.
State the aim of Chapman and DeLepp’s study.
- To investigate whether BII phobia could be treated by CBT and applied tension.
State the sample of Chapman and DeLepp’s study.
- Hispanic male called T, 42 years old.
- Experienced 20+ years of intense fear in medical situations.
- ## Had a child born with autism and felt guilty being unable to attend appointments.
