Unit 8 Flashcards
Anxiety
A state of feeling apprehension, uneasiness, uncertainty, or dread; results from a real or perceived threat whose actual source is unknown or unrecognized.
Mild Anxiety
- Heightened perceptual field
- Focus is flexible and is aware of anxiety
- Able to work effectively toward a goal
- Slight discomfort, attention-seeking behavior, restless, easily startled, irritability/impatience, mild tension-relieving behavior (foot or finger tapping, lip chewing, fidgeting)
Moderate Anxiety
- Narrowed perceptual field; grasps less of whats going on.
- Focuses on source of anxiety; unable to pay attention
- Able to solve problems but not at optimal ability
- Voice tremors, change in pitch, poor concentration, shakiness, mild somatic complaints, Increased vitals
- More tension-relieving behavior (pacing, banging of hands on table)
Severe Anxiety
- Greatly reduced and distorted perceptual field
- Focus on details or one specific detail
- Attention is scattered
- Problem solving feels impossible
- Feeling of dread, confusion, purposeless activity, sense of impending doom, More intense somatic complaints (chest discomfort, dizziness, nausea), diaphoresis, withdrawal, loud and rapid speech, threats and demands
Panic
Unable to attend to the environment
- focus is lost; may feel unreal
- Completely unable to process what is happening; irrational reasoning
- Experience of terror, immobility or severe hyperactivity, unintelligible communication, somatic complaints increase(numbness, tingling, SOB, chest PAIN), Hallucinations, delusions, likely out of touch with reality
Primary Gain
defense against and/or reduction of the emotional pain associated with anxiety.
Example: cutting
Secondary Gain
any benefit the individual obtains as a result of the symptoms
Are primary and secondary gains good or bad?
Typically Primary and secondary gains are bad because they reinforce symptoms and the maladaptive behaviors.
Obsessions
thoughts, impulses, or images that persist and recur, so that they cannot be dismissed from the mind even though the individual attempts to do so. Obsessions often seem senseless to the individual who experience them but cause a great deal of anxiety when present
Compulsions
ritualistic behaviors an individual feels driven to perform in an attempt to reduce anxiety or prevent an imagines calamity. Temporarily reduces anxiety but because relief is only temporary, the act must be repeated again and again
It is believed that people with too little of this neutrotransmitter suffer from anxiety
GABA
What class of medications are considered the first line of defense in most anxiety and obsessive-compulsive related disorders?
SSRIs
Ex. paroxetine, fluoxetine, escitalopram, fluvoxamine, sertraline.
The most common psychiatric disorder in the United States is….
Anxiety disorders.
They commonly have a co-morbidity with depression and/or substance abuse.
Basic level nursing interventions for anxiety
counseling, milieu therapy , promotion of self-care activities, psychobiological intervention and health teaching.
post traumatic stress disorder
an anxiety disorder characterized by persistent reexperiencing of a highly traumatic event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury to self or others, to which the individual responded with intense fear, helplessness, or horror
Reactive attachment disorder
A disorder describing children who have consistent pattern of inhibited, emotionally withdrawn behavior and who rarely direct attachment behaviors toward any adult caregivers.
Disinhibited social engagement disorder
A condition in which children demonstrate no normal fear of strangers, seem unfazed in response to separation from a primary caregiver, and are usually willing to go off with people who are unknown to them.
Dissociation
is a disconnection of thoughts, emotions, sensations and behaviors connected with a memory, with some dissociation considered a normal experience for most people, such as when we “space out”
4 Major features of PTSD
- Flashbacks
- Avoidance
- Hypervigilance
- Alterations in mood
Depersonalization
A phenomenon whereby a person experiences a sense of unreality of or estrangement from the self. For example, one may feel that limbs or extremities have changed, that one is seeing self and events from a distance, or that one is in a dream
