W6 Anxiety and Stressor-related problems (1) Flashcards
Phobias
marked fear or anxiety confined to a specific object or situation. Phobias are quite common. (Arachnophobia = fear of spiders, ophidiophobia = fear of snakes, acrophobia = fear of heights.)
Avoidance’s strategies (Phobias)
if someone has a fear of dog, they might avoid parks. This reinforces their negative beliefs. Usually, people are aware that it’s not rationale. Tend to have a distorted belief, can reinforce their phobia.
What do phobias trigger?
Triggers an extreme response, fear for their life’s, panic: flight or fight response: increase in heart rate, breathing and emotional arousal: feeling of fear.
Five subcategories of phobias.
1-Animal phobias (very common)
2-Natural environment phobias = afraid of storms, thunder, natural disaster.
3-Blood-injection-injury-phobias = sight of blood, anything that could lead to seeing blood.
4-Situational phobias = restricted to specific situation (afraid of flying, being in a lift) ( might need up picking)
5-Other phobias (such a wide range)
Phobias DSM-5
Disproportionate fear relating to a specific object or situation.
Actively avoided.
Significant distress in important areas of functioning.(= what impact does it have on them)
Symptoms cannot be explained by other mental disorders and persist for at least 6 months.
Psychoanalytic accounts (phobias)
Freud saw phobias as defence mechanisms against anxiety produced by repressed id (ça) impulses, and this fear becomes associated with external events or situations that have symbolic relevance to that repressed id impulse.
classical conditioning (phobias)
Classical conditioning: learning model of fear, learnt the fear of rats, because it was paired with the loud noise.
Limitation of cassical conditiong (phobias)
Not all phobias are linked to traumatic experiences.
Not everyone who has a traumatic experience with a specific object acquires a phobia.
Specific phobias are not evenly distributed across all stimuli. (animals vs guns)
Doesn’t take into account incubation. (repeated exposure can make fear worse, not explained.)
Biological accounts (phobias)
A-Bioolgical preparedness thoery
B-Evolutionary perspecive
C-Neurocirucuitry
Biological preparedness theory (phobias)
biological prepared or pre-wired to acquire certain phobias (e.g., real-life threat (hights, water, snakes) Seligman proposed that we are born with the predisposition to lean to fear these stimuli (not that we are born with the phobias.)
Evolutionary perspective (phobias)
biological predisposition to learn to associate fear with stimuli that have been hazardous for our ancestors.
Neurocirucitry (phobias)
underlies specifc phobias.
Amygdala: mediates fearful responding to phobic stimuli located within the medial temporal lobes.
Amygdala: formation/storage of memories associated with emotionally relevant events and acts as neural centre that identifies emotional input and then coordinates this information from higher cortical areas and subcortical nuclei. Correlation between the amygdala activation and emotional fear
Cognitive theories (phobias)
Propose that phobias are acquired by cognitive biases or maladaptive thinking More likely to pay attention to words/pictures associated with the phobia. In comparison to neutral words/pictures. Attentional bias. What comes first, their attention to threat specific detail then fear or other way around.
Multiple pathways (phobias)
Different types of phobias are acquired in different ways. Some phobias might be acquired by a traumatic experience. Other phobias may not be acquired by traumatic experiences.
Traumatic experiences
Emotions: disgust proposes to prevent the transmission of disease orally. Might have increased sensitivity disgust.
Disease avoidance model: attempt to avoid disease from animals, afraid of dogs because of rabbis.
Interventions phobias: exposure therapy
address the phobic beliefs that suffer holds about their phobic event or stimuli. Challenge those phobic beliefs, and provide other explanation for their fear, provide alternatives.
Ways PTSD is acquired
Direct experience: degree of subjectivity (one individual might not get PTSD in the same situation but the other will. Traumatic experiences are subjective.
Witness a traumatic event.
Hearing about a traumatic experienced.
Repeated exposure to details of trauma
PTSD DSM5
Exposure (direct or witnessed)
Intrusive symptoms (flashbacks, dreams)
Avoid external/internal reminds
Negative changes in cognition and mood
Increased arousal and reactivity
biological factors PTSD
: has many symptoms. Some studies on war veterans have suggested that PTSD has a genetic element to it (heritability component estimated at 30%) Gene-environment interaction. Smaller or underdeveloped hippocampus, memory of the even might not be processed same with a normal sized hippocampus. Failure to control amygdala activity: slow reading activity of amygdala.
Vulnerability factors PTSD
Feel overly responsible (tendency to take responsibility, self-blame of traumatic experiences)
Family history
Developmental factors (childhood)
Highly anxious
Low IQ (coping strategies, higher IQ better strategies, productive constructive strategies)
Mental defeat = negative view of the world, or themselves.
Classical conditioning PTSD
The trauma becomes associated at the time of the trauma with situational cues associated with the place and time of the trauma. When these cues are accounted in the future, they elicit the arousal and fear that was experienced during the trauma.
Emotion processing theory PTSD
closely linked to classical conditioning. Memories are processed and stored differently.
dual representation theory PTSD
provide cognitive explanation, 2 seperate memory systems.
VAM: verbally accessible memory: easy access.
SAM: situationally accesible memory (smells, sounds)
psychological debriefing PTSD
explain what happened. Aim to prevent the development of PTSD after the trauma.
Exposure therapies PTSD
Based on confronting/experiencing the events relevant to the trauma
Graded exposure PTSD
(similar to phobias) detailed narrative of the event, computer generated images, visualize trauma-related scenes, exposure to trauma cue.
Cognitive restructuring
- Evaluate and replace intrusive or negative automatic thoughts.
- Evaluate and change dysfunctional beliefs.(“world is a dangerous place”)
Obsessive compulsive disorders
For the person with OCD such thoughts and actions are repeated often and result in a distressing and disabling life.
OCD: heavy intrusive thoughts that are depilating.
OCD cycle
Belief => obsessions => anxiety => compulsion =>
Obsessions OCD
intrusive and recurring thoughts that the individual finds disturbing and uncontrollable.
Compulsions
represent repetitive or ritualised behaviour patterns that the individual feels driven to perform in order to prevent some negative outcome from happening.
Types of OCD
Checking Contamination
Symmetry and ordering
Ruminations/intrusive thoughts = something terrible is going to happen until they perform this action
OCD DSM5
Presence of obsessions
Presence of compulsion
The individuals believes that the behaviors will prevent a catastrophic event
Obsession and compulsions cause difficulty in performing other functions.
Symptoms cannot be explained by other disorders.
Biological factors OCD
inherited component: Twin studies have found high concordance for monozygotic twins compared with dizygotic twins. Family relatives of individuals with OCD are also more likely to have a diagnosis of OCD than non-family controls.
Psychological factors OCD
Doubting is a central feature of OCD. It’s been suggested that OCD may be characterized by memory deficits that give rise to doubting.
Clinical constructs
Inflated responsibility
thought-action fusion
Mental contamination
thought suppresion
Pervasion and the rool of mood
Clinical constructs OCD
purpose of these constructs is to link the thoughts, beliefs and cognitive processes to subsequent symptoms.
Infalted responsibility OCD
Sufferers tend to have inflated conceptions of their own responsibility for preventing harm. They believe they have to power to prevent the negative outcome.
Thought action fusion OCD
Many sufferers believe that their thoughts can influence events in the world. (i.e thoughts in some way can lead to action.)
Mental contamination OCD
feelings of dirtiness provoked without any physical contact with a contaminant. This can be caused by images, thoughts and memories.
Pervasion and the rool of mood OCD
Mood-as input hypothesis = until the goal of feeling better is attained they cannot move one.
Thought suppresion OCD
obsessive thoughts are intrusive and aversive they may try to actively suppress them (thought suppression).
Interventions OCD
Exposure adn ritual prevention
Cognitive behaviour
Pharamcological neurosurgical
Exposure adn ritual prevention treatment OCD
most common and most successful treatment.
1-Graded exposure
2-Ritual prevention = ritual reinforce the OCD
CBT OCD
based on targeting and modifying dysfunctional beliefs that OCD sufferers hold about their fear, thoughts, and the significance of their rituals.
Neurosurgery
OCD
last resort, if all other treatments have failed.
Pharmacological treatment-
OCD
cheaper, short-term effective way of treating OCD. SSRIs commonly prescribed drug- increase serotonin in the synaptic cleft. Increase serotonin.
Anxiety disorder
a psychological disorder characterized by an excessive or aroused state and feelings of apprehension, uncertainty and fear.Sp
ecific phobias
an excessive, unreasonable, persistent fear triggered by a specific object or situation
phobic belief
beliefs about phobic stimuli that maintain the phobic’s fear and avoidance of that stimulus or situation.
Non-associative fear acquisition
a model that argues that fear of set of biologically relevant stimuli develops naturally after very early encounters given normal maturational processes and normal background experiences and no specific traumatic experiences with these stimuli are necessary to evoke this fear.
anxiety sensitivity
fears of anxiety symptoms based on beliefs that such symptoms have harmful consequences
Catastrophic
misinterpretation of bodily sensations: a feature of panic disorder where there is a cognitive bias towards accepting the more threatening interpretation of an individual’s own sensations.
Safety behaviours
activities developed by sufferes of panic disorder as soon as they think they are having a panic attack, developed in the belief that this activity has saved them from a catastroohic outcome.
What are disorders that are related to OCD?
Body dysmorphic disorder, Hoarding disorders, hair pulling disorder, skin picking disorder.
Body dysmorphic disorder
re-occupation with perceived defects/flaws in physical appearance that are not usually perceived by others, this can give rise to compulsive grooming, mirror checking, reassurance seeking
Inflacted responsibility OCD
belief that one has power to bring about or prevent subjectively crucial negative outcomes.
Mood-as-input hypo OCD
: a hypothesis claiming that people use their concurrent mood as information about whether they have successfully completed a task or not.
Cingulotomy OCD
a neurosurgical treatment of OCD involving destroying cells in the cingulum, close to the corpus callosum.
Acute stress disorder
a short-term psychological and physical reaction to severe trauma. Symptoms are very similar to those of PTSD, but the duration is much shorter.
