anxiety & stress psychology Flashcards
What are anxiety and fear?
- Preparation for fight or flight behaviour
- Fear - acute response to an actual stressor
- Anxiety- towards a perceived/ potential stressor (anticipation).
- Stress - feeling overwhelmed by situations, real or perceived
What is anxiety disorder?
- Anxiety disorder –> abnormal and pathological fear and anxiety
- General anxiety disorder - is one of a range of anxiety disorders including panic disorder, PTSD, OCD, social phobia, specific phobias and acute stress disoder
- Fear and worry expand into other areas of life
What are the features of Generalised Anxiety Disorder?
- Psychological symptoms:
- Worry (difficult to control) –> can lead to decreased occupational and social functioning
- Interrupted sleep
- poor concentration
- increased sensitivity to noise
What are some of the physical symptoms of GAD?
- Sweating, dry mouth
- urinary frequency
- hyperventilation
- palpitations
What is the diagnostic criteria for GAD?
What are the symptoms associated?
- DSM IV –> excessive anxiety and worry occuring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activites (such as work or school performance).
- Difficult to control the worry. The anxiety and worry are associated with three or more of the following 6 symptoms:
- Symptoms associated:
- Restlessness and feeling keyed up or on edge
- Being easily fatigued
- difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
- irritability
- muscle tension
- sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless unsatisfying sleep).
What is the impact of GAD?
- It is a chonic condition and can co-occur with other physical conditions such as chronic pain
- Affects:
- dailing living
- work
- social interactions
- relationships
- suicidal ideation and attempts are higher
Can people be predisposed to GAD?
- Bio-psycho-social factors
- brain imaging –> neural activity associated with abnormal cognitions such as increased attention to threat
- Social environment –> early childhood, coping behaviours
- Perceived control –> those with perceived control of environment/ life have higher risk GAD.
What are some the treatments for anxiety?
- Pharmacological treatments
- relaxation and mindfullness techniques
- Cognitive behavioural therapy –> learning the link between the psychological changes and physiological responses
- Thought diary –> emotions associated with physical symptoms of anxiety, help identify the key worry
What are some common thought patterns of people with anxiety?
- Selective attention –> seeing only the negative features of an event
- Magnification –> exaggeration of the importance of undesirable events
- overgeneralisation –> drawing broad negative conclusions on the basis of a single insignificant event
What is CBT?
CBT à short course 6-8 weeks, giving patient snap shot now of their thought processes and how to adapt them.
What are the effects of stress?
- 4 classes:
- Affective –> shock, distress, anxiety, fear, depression, anger, frustration, lowered self esteem and guilt
- Behavioural –> smoking, alcohol, do not seek help, poor adherence to medication, social withdrawal, drug use and sexual function
- Cognitive –> poor attention, errors in decision making, hypervigilance for threats, bias to interpret ambiguous events as threatening, memory loss and learning difficult
- Physiological –> activation of NS, hormone production, metabolic function, immune function, fatigue, disease and illness
What is the physiological effect of stress in In-Patients?
On the ward:
- Slower wound healing
- more post surgery complications
- longer in patient stay and more staff time per day
- more analgesia use
- less satisfaction with their treatment associated with poor adherence
After discharge:
- Longer recovery –> return to work delayed
- more service use –> related symptoms
- less use of rehabilitation services
- increase risk of comorbidity and early mortality
Ultimately : stress not only increases risk of illness among healthy, but also impedes recovery/ worsens prognosis among the ill
What are the three perspectives to understand stress:
- 1) stimulus –> focus on the cause, stressor
- 2) response –> focus on the effect
- 3) process –> focus on the person environement interaction (transaction)
If the percieved demands are higher than that persons perception of control, then they start to feel stress.
What is the physiological response to stress?
Fight or flight vs rest and digest
Define stress
What are the three stages of the physiological stress response?
- Stress if a non specific physiological repsonse to a threat to ones physical or emotional well being
- Alarm –> fight or flight –> nervous endocrine and immune system activated for defence against threat
- Resistance –> conservation response initated to return to homeostasis but becomes counterproductive if alarm continues
- Exhaustion –> “burnout”. Depletion of physiological resources, collapse of adaptive responses, immune failures and disease outcomes.
What is the transactional model of stress?
- Describes a model of stress where there is a causitive chain of influence
- the stimulus event is indirectly related to the stress experience
- there is process of appraisal —> how important is the event to that individual, and can the individual deal with the demands of the event?
- Then a process of coping to intervene in the stressor- stress relationship
- Stress is a subjective post- appraisal outcome
