Anxiety Disorders Flashcards
Most Common Anxiety Disorder
Generalised Anxiety Disorder
Commonalities across Anxiety Disorders
- engagement in avoidance/safety behaviours
- all cause a clinically significant impairment in data functioning
- Interference with everyday functioning
- fear is proportionate to the level of threat
purpose of animal research
the use of animals in research is to assist in understanding the biological factors associated with the disorder.
Their lack of affect from cognitive and sociocultural factors allows researchers to suggest that these are as biological as possible.
Preparedness Theory (Seligman, 1971)
the overwhelming majority of phobias develop towards situations that ancestors would have needed to avoid to keep safe and pass on genes.
Limitations to Preparedness Theory
- Phobias develop to innocuous things, like buttons (small percentage)
- If it is a genetically driven trait it is expected that someone with a phobia of snakes would also have a fear of other dangerous reptiles or other dangerous situations (phobias are very specific)
Dual-Process Model (Mowrer, 1976)
Formalised “learning through experience”. Associated negative experience with fears and the maintenance of the fear through avoidance/safety behaviours
→ Part 1: Classical Conditioning - Acquisition
→ Part 2: Instrumental Conditioning - Negative Reinforcement (avoidance behaviours strengthens the expectations of the fear)
Perceptual Distortion
may interpret threats from feared stimuli, even if the stimuli is not harming them
Appraisals
evaluations of events shape our emotions that cause specific reactions
- the interpretation of these events rather than what actually happened
- helplessness and powerlessness
exposure therapy
based on extinction, presented with feared stimulus in controlled environment (important to ensure that fear-based event never happens, in their perception)
Limitations
- not a positive experience for patient
D-Cycloserine (DCS)
Effect on Exposure Therapy
Theoretically can increase learning capabilities and fasten exposure therapy, but it can also facilitate the learning of a fear if the boundaries are pushed to far in a clinical setting
Social Anxiety Disorder
Themes
- people that are socially anxious fear and avoid the scrutiny of others
- concerned with judgement and embarrassment
- avoid social situations or endure them with great discomfort
physiological symptoms of SAD
racing heart, trembling and sweating (sympathetic nervous system)
May trouble concentrating during social encounters, can cause distress in social relationships, work and education
David Clark and Adrian Wells (1995) Cognitive Model of Social Phobia
- Among people with anxiety a negative experience leads to negative schemas and appraisals about social interactions
- Schemas can be specific to the person
“The social phobic equates feeling humiliated with being humiliated, feeling out of control with being out of control and feeling anxious with being noticeably anxious.”
CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
therapist and client work through negative schemas and appraisals and challenge them
- Also can challenge the thought errors, helping the person to redirect their attention to other people’s social cues and use those cues to garner information
- Also to convince the person to lose their safety behaviours, to undergo new extinction learning
self-focussed attention
hypersensitivity to physiological functions and psychological consciousness
- neglect social cues they are supposed to be reacting to
- influence of schemas on social situations
