Anxiety Disorders Flashcards
What is GAD?
Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least
6 months, about a number of themes (such as work or school performance).
What characterises a panic disorder? (what is it, physiological symptoms, cognitive)
What: Sudden episodes of extreme anxiety/distress
Physiological symptoms: Palpitations, dizziness, chest pain.
Cognitive: very catastrophic cognitive thoughts e.g. fears of dying.
How long do panic attacks last for?
5-10 minutes
What is social phobia?
Fear of negative evaluation
Coping mechanism in social phobia?
Avoidant behaviour
Distinguish obsessions and compulsions in OCD?
Obsessions are repetitive thoughts, compulsions are repetitive behaviours.
Obsessions: intrusive, repetitive and persistent thoughts. E.g. urge that I’m going to swear in public again
Compulsions: Excessive and repetitive ritualistic behaviour that you feel you must perform, or something bad will happen e.g. washing over and over again, in response to the obsession that bacteria will get inside my skin. e.g. checking door locks.
The purpose of compulsions in OCD?
To minimise anxiety of obsessions.
Symptoms in PTSD (arousal level and cognitive)
Arousal level: Heightened arousal, hypervigilant
Cognitive: traumatic event is persistently re-experienced through intrusive thoughts/flashbacks/nightmares
What is a separation anxiety disorder?
Unusually strong fear or anxiety to separating from people they feel a strong attachment to.
Can separation anxiety disorder in kids be applied to adults?
Yes
Separation anxiety disorder in kids will (e.g.)
Avoid sleepovers, playdates etc.
Most common fear in panic attacks?
Is the fear of losing control
…. % of panic attacks occur for no apparent reason
60
What makes exposure therapy easier for people with agoraphobia?
being accompanied by someone, being close to home, being in familiar territory, shorter durations (e.g. 5 min bus trip as opposed to 20 mins).
% in PTSD
1) intrusive thoughts
2) numbing feeling and sleep disturbance
3) depression
1) 100%
2) 44%
3) 67%
Ratio of anxiety from females to males.
2:1
Except in OCD where its equal gender distributions.
…% of people had anxiety disorder over a 12 month period
14%
About …% who had GAD met criteria for another disorder
and about …% who had social phobia met criteria for another disorder.
70%, 80%
Age of onset for OCD is
Age of onset for PTSD is
late adolescence e.g. 19
early twenties e.g. 23
Remission means
loss of symptoms or reduced severity of symptoms temporarily
… disorders are chronic because even after … years, people still meet criteria for social phobia.
anxiety, eight years
Bad or good?
Remission is …
Relapse is …
remission is good, relapse baddd
… disorder has a higher remission than others
Panic
Best treatment for anxiety disorders?
CBT e.g. target thoughts about themselves e.g. they may think they are boring.
What are the safety behaviours of someone with anxiety?
Safety behaviours: looking down, speaking softly, rehearsing what they are saying beforehand→actually often contributes to a cycle of anxiety.
Anxiety characterised by fear of
negative evaluation
… - … % of variance in anxious symptoms being heritable
30-40% of variance in anxious symptoms being heritable
4 Parts of brain involved in anxiety
amygdala: emotional/fear processing –>reactivity higher for ppl with anxiety. Involved in fear conditioning. Memory for emotional stimuli.
hippocampus: memory system and emotion, link btn stress and context.
prefrontal cortex: anticipation of threat, cognitive assessment/appraisal of threat, involved in higher order functioning, memory for context and retrieval
Brain stem: Raffai nuclei (produces serotonin) and locus serillus (nora adrenaline producer).
What neurochemical is particularly responsible for episodic part of anxiety ie. panic attacks?
Noradrenaline (that sudden rush of fair) noradrenaline is released. Linked to heart rate and respiration.
What role does serotonin play in anxiety?
The gradual modulating increase or decrease in anxiety
Can one’s temperament predict anxiety later in life?
Yes at 3 months can identify which children are of greater risk of developing anxiety later on. Children very withdrawn, or very inhibited. They don’t make a lot of eye contact, don’t approach stranger, hold on to mother.
Can parent style predict anxiety for child?
Yes overprotective parenting can predict anxiety.
What is the information processing theory?
The theory that people are anxious because of their attentional bias towards threat. DIFFERENCES IN ATTENTION, INTERPRETATION AND MEMORY. e.g1) they interpret ambiguous things in threatening ways. e.g2) they remember threatening things more than others (mixed evidence for memory tho).
Mum has anxiety, I or a first degree relative are … - … times more likely to have anxiety
4-6 times
What is Benzodiazepine?
Its a biochemical that facilitates the binding of GABA molecules to GABA receptors.
What does GABA stand for? And what does it do?
Gamma Aminobutryic Acid (GABA) – inhibits emotions particularly anxiety
e.g. when rats are stressed, no. of Benzodiazepine receptors increase by 20% as a response (because more anxiety inhibition is needed).
What does HPA stand for? What does this system do?
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is responsible for arousal in response to stress, bref: fight or flight/ general stress system. Cortisol very relevant here. Early experiences may modulate later HPA responsiveness.
What do learning theories of anxiety suggest? (conditioned learning)
That the occurrence of an aversive event together with specific stimuli leads to fear. e.g. little Albert and the white rabbits.
What 5 problems are there with conditional learning theories of anxiety?
1) It attempts to produce long-lasting fears in lab. unsuccessful. This could never be REPLICATED.
2) Many aversive experiences do not result in phobias (e.g., Air-raids)
3) People with phobias do not usually recall “conditioning”. Dont recall traumatic/negative event.
4) Phobias do not extinguish easily
5) Phobias occur to a limited set of stimuli (no equipotentiality) –> any given stimulus should have same potential to be a phobia e.g chair and snake but yet phobias occur to a limited finite set of stimuli which does not fit with conditioning theory
What is the preparedness theory of phobias?
Some stimuli in world are biologically prepared because of their evolutionary significance (still a conditioning theory but it only occurs for prepared stimuli)
What is a prepared stimulus?
3 characteristics
1) Fear is acquired in a single learning trial
2) The fear is non-cognitive ie. can’t talk yourself out of it logically
3) The fear is resistant to extinction
What are three KEY risk factors for anxiety!!?!
1) Temperament (shyness/withdrawal or behavioural inhibition).
2) Parenting (overprotection or modelling)
3) Life events
