CLINICAL- Anxiety disorders Flashcards
The 3 anxiety disorders are
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Agoraphobia
- Specific phobia (blood injection phobia)
Describe Generalized anxiety disorder
- This is a long term- condition wherein feelings of anxiety may be on everyday events such as health, finances or family
symptoms are: - fear of losing control
- Nausea
- feeling dizzy or light headed
- sweating
Describe agoraphobia
- This is characterized by excessive fear in response to situations where escape may be difficult or help is unavailable such as:
- public transport
- crowded areas
- being outside home alone.
- Being in enclosed spaces
- The person is scared of having panic attacks or other embarrassing symptoms in a public place
Describe specific phobia
- This is characterized by excessive fear/ anxiety when exposed to or in anticipation of a specific stimulus
- The fear is usually disproportionate to the actual threat from the stimulus
- The symptoms can persist for several months and can impair important parts of functioning.
What are the 2 measures used for anxiety disorders
- The Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7)
- The Blood Injection Phobia Inventory (BIPI)
Describe the GAD-7
- This is a questionnaire
- It has 7-items that measure the severity of anxiety. examples of items:
> feeling nervous
> being so restless its hard sit still
> feeling afraid as if something might happen . - Respondents are asked to provide a score between 0-3 for each item whereby it checks the frequency of their symptoms:
0= not at all
1=several days
2=more than half the days
3=nearly everyday
Describe the BIPI
- This is a self-report measure containing 18 possible situations involving blood and injections
- for each situation they are asked to evaluate different reactions they might experience for that situation.
EXAMPLE SITUATION: When i see someone injured/bleeding on the road
EXAMPLE REACTIONS:
a) I wont bear the situation
b) I think I am going to faint
c) I think something bad is going to happen to me
What did Mas et al 2010 find
- he found the BIPI has excellent reliability and concurrent validity and was able to clearly discriminate between diagnosed with the phobia and those that werent.
Evaluate the GAD-7 and BIPI
- High concurrent validity
- Response bias due to self-report
- Reductionists as they rely on a single quantitative measurement of a complex patient experience.
- Cultural bias (western culture)
What does the Biological explanation suggest for this disorder
GENETICS:
- It suggests that we are born prepared to fear certain objects.
- There are stimuli in the environment that pose a threat to survival that we are genetically set up to avoid.
in Ost et al. Describe what the blood-phobic patients went through
- they watched a 30 mins silent colour video of surgery being performed
- They were told not to close their eyes but try to watch as long as they could
- the experimenter would track their gaze direction
- if the participant looked away or stopped the video, the test would end
in Ost et al. Describe what the injection- phobic patients went through
- This involved 20 steps from the individuals fingertip being cleaned to having a fingertip being pricked
- The steps were described to the patients and they were to say whether or not it was ok to perform
Describe the measures used in Ost et al.
- The measures recorded their maximal performance and rated their fainting behaviour (0-4)
- the patients would do a self-rating of anxiety (0-10)
- The patients were given another questionnaire on their thoughts and feelings during the tests
- Their blood pressure and heart rate were monitored
state one result found in Ost et al.
There was a higher proportion of the participants with blood phobia (70%) and injection phobia (56%) that had a history of fainting when exposed to their respective phobic stimuli compared to those with other specific phobias.
what did Ost et al. conclude
There seems to be a strong genetic link for these behaviours which are more likely for these phobias than other phobias to produce a strong physiological response (fainting)