Anxiety Flashcards
Panic disorder
Repeated unexpected attacks of anxiety
Phobias (Specific & Social)
Marked fear and avoidance of a situation or object
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Distressing thoughts or images with “putting right” actions
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Unwanted, distressing memories of traumatic event
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Excessive worry about several different things
How common are anxiety disorders?
10%-18% prevalence in 12 month period
What proportion of anxiety disorders warrant treatment?
2/3
Gender in anxiety?
Higher in women
Anxiety is often comorbid with?
Depression and substance abuse
Is anxiety heritable?
Yes, runs in families but obviously multifactorial aetiology
What is the anxiety disorder persistence?
33% to 70% recovery over 12 years depending on disorder type
Cost to society of anxiety disorders?
Around 7% of GDP
Is paranoid thought disorder a type of anxiety?
No
Medications for ADs?
Benzodiazepines (only for short-term distress, dependency problem so not used chronically)
Anti-depressants (especially SSRIs and SNRIs)
SSRIs/SNRIs: only often work in the short term, many people relapse.
Psychological treatment for AD?
CBT and cognitive therapy
How many sessions comprise CBT?
Brief 8-16 sessions
What is CBT based on?
Cognitive model of emotional disorders
What are the aims of CBT?
Aims to change problematic beliefs and related behaviours (rather than original causes).
Widen the gap between thought and behavior/ response
Prevents mental escalation, event don’t inevitably lead to emotion, therefore interpretation is key and can be modified.
Panic disorder is often accompanied by…
Marked bodily sensations
What is the cognitive theory of panic disorder?
Cognitive Theory of Panic Disorder (Clark, 1986): Persistent panic attacks result from catastrophic misinterpretation of benign body sensations
Misinterpretation involves believing the sensations indicate an immediate physical or mental disaster
What sensations are misinterpreted in panic disorder
Sensations that are misinterpreted are mainly those involved in normal anxiety responses
What leads to maintenance of panic disorder?
Selective attention to bodily cues and safety behaviours (i.e stopping and calming down, individual believes that the worst only doesn’t happen when they do the safety behaviour).
Cognitive therapy for panic disorder
Identify catastrophic interpretations of bodily sensation
Generate alternative, non-catastrophic interpretations of bodily sensations
Test out validity of catastrophic and non-catastrophic interpretations by discussion & behavioural experiments
Behavioural experiments for panic disorder?
Induce feared sensations to show their true cause
Reading word pairs (breathless-suffocate etc.)
Focus attention on body
Drop safety behaviours in presence of feared sensation to discover they are not dangerous
What is social anxiety?
Marked fear & avoidance of social or performance situations (meeting strangers, talking to a group, eating or drinking while being observed, using public toilets, public speaking, etc.)
Why does social anxiety persist?
Shift to internal focus of attention
Use of internal information to infer how one appears to others (create distorted images and feelings)
Safety behaviours (shutting down and not speaking)
What happens in CBT for social anxiety?
Experiential exercise to demonstrate adverse effects of self-focused attention and safety behaviours
Video (and still) feedback to correct negative self-images
Attention training to promote external focus
Behavioural experiments to test patients’ fearful predictions in social situations while dropping safety behaviours and/or enacting feared outcomes.
Surveys to discover other people’s view of feared outcomes.
Memory re-scripting to reduce social trauma
What treatment is NOT used in CBT for social anxiety?
Training in self focussed attention
Which describes the effect of a routine psychological debriefing given immediately after a traumatic event ?
Retards natural recovery
Phobias are
Resistant to drug treatment
Are phobias reduced by informing patient of their phobia?
No
What are treatments for anxiety?
Antidepressants
Benzodiazepines
CBT
Exposure therapy
