Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive and Trauma-Related Disorders Flashcards
Explain fight or flight.
Physiological changes in the body that occur in response to a perceived threat including elevated heart rate, metabolism, blood pressure, breathing and muscle tension.
Describe specific phobia.
Marked and persistent fear in response to the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation.
Describe panic disorder.
Recurrent or unexpected panic attacks.
Describe agoraphobia.
Anxiety about being in situations in which escape might be difficult or help may not be available in the event of experiencing panic symptoms.
Describe social anxiety disorder (social phobia).
Marked fear of social situations where the person is exposed to possible scrutiny by others.
Describe generalised anxiety disorder.
Excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events or activities.
Describe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Recurrent obsessions or compulsions that are time-consuming or cause marked distress or impaired functioning.
Describe post-traumatic stress disorder.
After exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence, symptoms or re-experiencing the trauma, avoiding stimuli associated with the trauma, alterations of cognitions and mood and increased arousal.
_____ described the fear reaction to danger as the fight or flight response.
Cannon.
Give three vulnerabilities that increase the sensitivity of the alarm trigger.
Biological factors, generalised psychology factors and specific psychological factors.
This clustering of emotional disorders around a common genetic vulnerability has been called:
General neurotic syndrome.
Explain negative reinforcement.
Increasing the frequency of a behaviour through the removal of an aversive experience.
What is the autonomic nervous system?
Part of the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary functions like heart rate, digestion, respiration rate, and perspiration.
Which systems does the autonomic nervous system include?
Sympathetic and parasympathetic.
What does positive affectivity involve?
Feeling enthusiastic, active and alert.
What does negative affectivity involve?
Subjective distress involving anxiety, disgust and anger.
What four subtypes of phobias does the DSM-5 specify?
Animal; natural environment; blood, injection and injury; and situational.
When do most specific phobias begin?
Childhood and adolescence.
What does the greater number of children with phobias than adults suggest?
Many phobias remit without treatment.
How did Freud think phobias came into being?
From unresolved sexual conflict.
What did Watson and Raynor manage to classically condition?
Fear of a white rat in Little Albert.
What kind of basis did Seligman suggest for phobias?
Biological evolutionary.
Explain prepared classical conditioning.
Evolution has prepared people to be easily conditioned to fear objects or situations that were dangerous in prehistoric times.
What is the SCR a measure of?
Amount of moisture on the hands.
Explain exposure therapy.
Behavioural technique in which the client confronts the feared stimuli that they have avoided until their anxiety reduces.
Explain in vivo exposure.
A technique of behaviour therapy in which clients confront their feared objects/situations in real life.
Explain flooding.
A behavioural technique in which the client is intensively exposed to a feared object until their anxiety diminishes.
Which treatment method for phobia is most effective?
In vivo.
Explain extinction.
Elimination of a classically conditioned response by removal of the unconditioned stimulus or the elimination of an operantly conditioned response by removal of the reinforcement.
Explain self-efficacy.
A person’s belief that they have the ability to succeed in a specific situation.
Give a behavioural mechanism that may account for the effectiveness of exposure therapy.
Extinction.
Describe a panic attack.
An episode where an individual experiences a rapid increase in the physiological and cognitive symptoms of intense fear and discomfort.
Give some symptoms of a panic attack.
Pounding or racing heart, sweating, trembling, dizziness or faintness, choking/smothering sensations, shortness of breath, chills or heat sensations, and fears of dying, going crazy or losing control.
Give five situations that are used to diagnose agoraphobia.
When the sufferer experiences marked fear or anxiety while using public transport; being in open spaces; being in enclosed spaces; standing in queues or in a crowd; and being outside of home alone.
What is neuroticism?
A personality trait entailing a tendency to experience negative emotional states.
Give two internal machinations that can generate a stressful life event.
Generalised psychological vulnerability, like anxiety sensitivity, and generalised biological sensitivity, like neuroticism.
What can cause the alarm reaction to be triggered at lower intensities of stress?
Individuals with a generalised biological vulnerability react more strongly to everyday stressors.
Explain anxiety sensitivity.
A belief that the bodily symptoms of anxiety have harmful consequences.
What did Clark believe regarding individual’s misrepresentations of the physical sensations accompanying panic?
Individual’s catastrophise the symptoms of panic (I’m having a heart attack, I’m dying) and so elicit the fight or flight response, which generates more sensation
What can agoraphobia occur as a complication of?
Panic disorder.
Name some effective pharmalogical treatments for panic disorder.
Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and high-potency benzodiazepines.
Give a disadvantage of benzodiazepines.
Dependence.
Give a disadvantage of SSRIs.
Sexual dysfunction.
Give two disadvantages of tricyclics.
Dry mouth and dizziness.
Name two tricyclics.
Imipramine and amitriptyline.
Name a SSRI.
Fluoxetine.
Name two benzodiazepines.
Valium and Xanaz.
What is cognitive behaviour therapy?
A type of psychological treatment that combines both cognitive and behavioural concepts and techniques.
How are external phobic avoidances treated?
Graded in vivo response.
Explain graded in vivo response.
People confront less fear-provoking situations, until only minimal fear is produced, and then proceed through other phobic situations until they can face the most fear-provoking situation.
What is interoceptive exposure?
A behavioural technique that entails exposing the individual to the physical sensations of a panic attack.
