problem 3 Flashcards
1
Q
What is anxiety and its characteristics?
A
- anticipation of something fearful happening/feeling of apprehension about possible future dangers
- out of proportion fear
- not specific: anticipation of something happening
2
Q
What is the comorbidity of anxiety?
A
- associated with depression
- substance abuse highly correlated
- mood disorders are highly correlated with anxiety
3
Q
What is fear?
A
- immediate response to danger , primary emotion, activates fight or flight response
- individuals attempt to leave/flee the situation, unlike in anxiety
4
Q
What are the DSM-5 requirements for specific phobias, social phobia and agoraphobia?
A
- Specific phobia
- one fears a specific object or specific situation
- immediate fear
- actively avoiding phobic object
- Social phobia
- fear of one or more specific social situations
- actively attempt to avoid the social situation
- Agoraphobia
- fear of inability to escape situations, and seeking help in dangerous situations
- fear of physical arousal/ being scared
- develops from a certain specific situation
5
Q
What are some subtypes of specific and social phobias?
A
- Specific phobias
- animal phobia
- natural environment phobia
- blood/injection/injury phobia
- situation phobia
- Social phobias
- performance phobia: e.g. public speaking, stage performance
- non-performance phobia: e.g. eating, showing up in social context
6
Q
What is the prevalence of each 3 phobia?
A
- specific phobia: 12% of population has a type of specific phobias, 4% have blood phobia
- social phobia: more common in women, than men, 12% of population has it
- agoraphobia: 1.4% of population
7
Q
What is the age of onset for each of the three phobias?
A
- specific phobias: varies for different types
- animal phobias and blood/injection, usually begin in childhood
- driving phobia, and claustrophobia in adolescence
- social phobia: usually begin in early/middle adolescence, definitely developed by early adulthood
- agoraphobia: 23 - 34 years old, in women it can occur later, 30 - 40 years old
8
Q
What are the biological and psychological causal factors for specific factors?
A
- Biological factors:
- specific genes
- evolution prepared individuals to fear certain stimuli for survival
- Psychological factors:
- can be learned, through classical conditioning
- could cause generalisability of phobias when objects share similar physical characteristics
- operant conditioning: based on consequences, behaviour is more/less likely to happen
- vicarious reinforcement: observing someone, and seeing their reaction
9
Q
What are the biological and psychological causal factors for social factors?
A
- Biological factors:
- dominance hierarchy: social arrangement, where some individuals are dominant, some submissive, causes inferiority
- temperament of child : if easily distressed in such situations, they have increased risk of development
- Psychological factors:
- rumination: repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences
- connected to parenting styles
- cognitive biases: perception of how one is expected to behave
- perceptions of uncontrollability and unpredictability regarding social situations
- conditioning: learned through negative experiences
10
Q
What are the causal factors for agoraphobia?
A
- moderate heritable component
- based on neuroticism, when one gets more overwhelmed/nervous in situations
11
Q
Which treatments can be used to treat phobias?
A
- exposure therapy: controlled exposure to the stimuli that elicit phobic fear
- flooding: an intensive type of exposure therapy in which you must face your fear at a maximum level of intensity for an extended amount of time
- participant modelling: therapist models ways of interacting with the phobic stimulus
- The drug D-cyloserine can enhance the effectiveness of exposure therapy for fear of heights
- interoceptive exposure: deliberate exposure to feared internal sensations
- medication:
- social phobias can be treated with medication, unlike specific phobias
- cognitive behavioural therapy is more effective than medicine
- meds need to be taken long term to avoid relapse
- medication for agoraphobia:
- anxiolytics (anti-anxiety med)
- some symptoms of relief
- act quickly (30-60mins)
- side effects: drowsiness, sedation, impaired cognitive motor performance
- develop psychological dependence on the drug
- antidepressants
- do not create physiological dependence
- alleviate any comorbid depressive symptoms
- takes 4 weeks before any beneficial effects
- side effects
- relapse rates are quite high when the drug is discontinued
12
Q
What are the effects of D-cyloserine (DCS)?
A
- DCS improves therapy
- most effective when administered just before or just after exposure
- some studies show that DCS has a small effect, it doesn’t improve treatment but helps achieve goals sooner
- overall effect of DCS is very small
- only for patients with social anxiety it has a small effect
13
Q
What is applied tension?
A
- a behavioural technique that intentionally increases a person’s blood pressure immediately before and during the feared event
- helps prevent fainting
14
Q
What is the preparedness theory?
A
- we are much more predisposed to fear certain things, snakes, spiders, height, etc…
- through evolution, ancestors have developed fears to certain things that make them more likely to survive
- they are not inborn or innate but rather are easily acquired or especially resistant to extinction
15
Q
What is the inflation effect?
A
- when someone’s fear of a conditioned stimuli is inflated
- this is a criticism to conditioning views on development of stress as it shows there are many more factors that can influence the development/maintenance of stress
