GAD Flashcards
Define GAD
Feelings of stress and impending doom along with physical symptoms of stress, which last 6 months or more.
What are the physical symptoms of stress?
Irritability, muscle tension, restlessness, fatigue, poor concentration, disturbed sleep
pathological worrying
This is a cardinal diagnostic feature
Worrying is perceived as…
uncontrollable, closely associated with catastrophising
Define catastrophising
Expects the worst case scenario to happen
DSM criteria for diagnosing GAD
1) Excessive anxiety and worry about two or more domains of anxiety or events
2) Excessive anxiety and worry on more days than not, for 6 months or more
3)The anxiety or worry is associated with 3 or more symptoms of stress
4) Clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning
5)not attributable to other substance or or another medical condition.
6)The disturbance is not better accounted for by another mental disorder
Aetiology- Genes and brain structures
1) Modest heritability- family history (inherit genes that make them vulnerable to developing GAD)
2)Brain regions- disturbance in amygdala-prefrontal cortex circuit dysfunction. Amygdala (threat processing). Prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating emotions and behaviour
Aetiology- Neurotransmitter and Neurohormonal deficiency
Gamma-aminobutrycic acid (GABA)
Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH)
What is gamma-aminobutrycic acid (GABA)
- main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain
- inhibits amygdala activity
- calms nervous system down and improves quality of sleep
What is Cortico-tropin releasing hormone?
- released by the hypothalamus
- stimulates release of cortisol
Aetiology- dispositional characteristics of worriers
- intolerance of uncertainty
- high perfectionism
- feelings of responisbility for negative outcomes
- poor problem-solving confidence
Information processing biases for individuals with GAD ( dot probe task)
- Individuals with GAD preferentially allocate attention to threatening stimuli
- Participants with GAD will respond faster when probe is consistent to the threatening stimuli compared to when it is inconsistent
What conclusions do we gather from the dot probe tasks
- forced learing of threat attentional bias may actually cause anxiety
- development of attention bias modicfication
- used as a treatment to reverse the bias
Treatment for forced learning attentional bias (attention bias modification)
the purpose: to correct attentional bias in anxious individuals
what is used: classic probe test with modifications
how it works: probe always appears in the same position as the neutral word. individuals that are trained attend more rapidly to the neutral word
results; attention bias towards threat is reduced
How does the classic probe test (with modifications)
Training to focus on benign content can affect worry by decreasing the frequency of negative intrusive thoughts
