Generalised Anxiety Disorder Flashcards
what are the physiological symptoms produced from an anxiety response?
muscle tension, tiredness, high BP, tense, restless, difficulty sleeping, headaches
who is GAD most common in?
women, people living alone
what is the average age of onset of GAD?
21 years
what triggers anxiety?
uncertainty
give some of the features of GAD that are different to normal worry
worry about all sorts of things, expect the worst, uncontrollable, worries = extremely upsetting and stressful, significantly disrupts job and social life, worrying almost everyday for at least 6 months
what are the 2 types of beliefs about worrying?
positive (if i worry about a negative event ill be prepared) and negative (I will lose my mind with worry)
what behaviours are associated with feelings of anxiety and worry?
avoid situations, check up on things/others, seek reassurance, try to stop thoughts, distracting activity, excessive preparing
what causes anxiety when facing different situations?
worried they won’t know how to cope with each situation
how often does symptoms of worry and anxiety have to occur for it to be a GAD diagnosis?
most days on a regular basis
list the different theories of aetiology for GAD
biological, heritable influences, environmental factors, cognitive biases
GAD runs in families but heritability is ____
low
if GAD isn’t inherited what may be the heritable influence?
personality trait that predisposes the individual to any type of anxiety
in what brain area do GAD sufferers show hyper-responsivity?
amygdala
in female GAD sufferers, what was shown with the amygdala in brain imaging scans?
fMRI > showed greater response, larger in GAD patients than controls, greater activation to negative images
what are the 3 environmental factors that affect GAD?
negative life events, attachment style, modelling
increase risk by questioning stability and predictability of the world > leads to constant anxiety in order to prepare for unpredictable events =
negative life events
individuals who develop anxious or insecure attachments during infancy is associated with anxiety later in life =
attachment styles
what are young adults more likely to report about their parents if they have a GAD diagnosis?
felt rejected by parents, over-controlling, emotionally cold
if children see parents acting in anxious way to environment this will influence them =
modelling
bias that maintains hypervigilience for threat, create further source of worry and maintain anxiety =
information processing bias
a sufferer who is constantly focusing on the negative and seeking things that go wrong have a bias in?
information processing
what does evidence suggest sufferers focus their attention on?
threatening stimuli and info
when presenting patients with happy or sad faces and positive and negative events, what were the findings?
largely focused on sad faces and negative events
the cognitive bias model (attentional and information processing bias) gave rise to what intervention?
attention bias modification
