Term
| The physical symptoms of anxiety are: |
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Definition
-feeling hot and sweating
- blushing, trembling, shakiness or
- unsteadiness
- dizziness and shortness of breath
- dry mouth
- numbness or tingling
- tight muscles
- heart racing/pounding (tachycardia)
- rapid breathing (tachypnoea). |
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Term
| Types of anxiety disorders |
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Definition
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD).
Panic.
Agoraphobia.
Specific phobia.
Social phobia.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Acute stress disorder.
Anxiety disorder due to a medical condition.
Substance-induced anxiety disorder.
Anxiety disorder not otherwise specified (NOD). |
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Term
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Definition
| Phobias are 'an irrational fear of a specific object or situation that markedly interferes with an individual's ability to function' (Barlow & Durand, 2015, p. 143). Under the DSM-5, there are three main categories of phobia: specific phobia, social phobia and agoraphobia (fear of entering public places). |
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Term
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Definition
| Social phobia involves anxiety about aspects of social or performance situations that are unfamiliar, such as possible scrutiny and humiliation or embarrassment. Exposure to these situations provokes anxiety, so the person actively avoids the situation, despite recognising that their response is excessive or irrational. |
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Term
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Definition
| Specific phobias are intense and irrational fears of specific objects or situations accompanied by avoidance of the feared object. Stimuli may acquire phobic properties through conditioning or other learning mechanisms or through activation of constitutional predispositions. |
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Term
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Definition
Within the specific phobia disorder there are a number of sub-types including:
animal type—animals or insects (generally has a childhood onset)
natural environment type—fear is cued by aspects of the natural environment such as storms, heights, water (usually a childhood onset)
situation types—situations can include flying, elevators, driving, enclosed places (childhood onset and middle 20s)
other—any other type of stimulus; can include fear of choking, vomiting, contracting an illness, hypodermic injections, children's fears of loud sounds or costumed characters (e.g. clowns). |
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Term
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Definition
| Agoraphobia involves anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult or where help may not be available. Hence, the situations are avoided or else are endured with marked distress or with anxiety about having a panic attack. To be diagnosed with agoraphobia, the anxiety or phobic avoidance must not be better accounted for by another disorder. |
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Term
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Definition
| Panic disorder involves recurrent and unexpected panic attacks wherein the individual worries about having more attacks. The average panic attack lasts around 10 minutes. A panic attack usually includes feelings of heart racing, sweating, shaking and shortness of breath. Other criteria for panic attack include: |
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Term
| General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) |
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Definition
| Generalised anxiety disorder involves excessive and uncontrollable worry that lasts at least six months and occurs more days than not. The physical symptoms differ from fear or anxiety, perhaps because activation of the autonomic systems cannot be sustained for six months. Hence, GAD sufferers show less responsiveness to stress, and 'autonomic restrictors' that prevent a constant state of arousal. However, they do exhibit distinct muscle tension and, cognitively, they show acute awareness of the potential for threat (hypervigilance). |
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Term
| Obsessive compulsive disorder |
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Definition
| Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) involves unwanted and intrusive distressing thoughts or images usually accompanied by compulsive behaviours designed to neutralise those thoughts or images. Checking and cleaning rituals are most common. People with OCD display either obsessions and/or compulsions. |
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Term
| The Australian Psychological Society has developed a code of ethics and professional practice covering: |
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Definition
- informed consent
- participant welfare
- voluntary participation
- confidentiality
- avoiding deception
- fair and humane treatment of animals
- gaining appropriate ethics approval. |
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Term
Fear is a basic emotion that involves:
concern about the future.
the activation of the 'fight or flight' response.
negative thoughts, but not a change in physiological arousal.
a complex blend of negative mood and self-preoccupation. |
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Definition
| the activation of the 'fight or flight' response. |
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Term
Which of the following would be an example of anxiety?
Julie jumped when she saw the snake.
Hilda dreaded walking home alone.
Carl was certain that the food was poisoned.
The voices in Paul's head told him he should be afraid. |
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Definition
| Hilda dreaded walking home alone. |
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Term
Martin is afraid to fly. He knows his boss wants him to take a trip for the business. Martin feels miserable, because he wants to keep his job but cannot even imagine getting on a plane. The most likely diagnosis for Martin is:
agoraphobia without history of panic disorder.
social phobia.
specific phobia, situation type.
panic disorder with agoraphobia |
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Definition
| specific phobia, situation type. |
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Term
Which of the following is associated with a unique physiological response pattern?
Agoraphobia
Blood-injection-injury phobia
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Generalised anxiety disorder |
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Definition
| Blood-injection-injury phobia |
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Term
Nicole's mother is terribly afraid of snakes. Although Nicole has never actually seen a snake, her mother has told her time and again to be careful to look for them when she is walking. Now Nicole has an intense fear of snakes and refuses to walk in the grass. This is an example of:
vicarious conditioning of a phobia.
classical conditioning of a phobia.
operant conditioning of a phobia.
unconscious conditioning of a phobia. |
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Definition
| vicarious conditioning of a phobia. |
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Term
Evolutionary preparedness explains:
why phobic people are likely to maintain their avoidance behavior.
how the inflation effect works.
why cognitive variables are so important in phobias.
why some types of phobias are much more common than others. |
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Definition
| why some types of phobias are much more common than others. |
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Term
Virtual reality environments:
permit the use of a combination of exposure therapy, participant modeling, and stress inoculation.
have been shown to be effective in treating agoraphobia.
appear to be more effective in treating phobias than live exposure to the feared stimulus.
allow exposure therapy to be conducted in a simulated setting. |
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Definition
| allow exposure therapy to be conducted in a simulated setting. |
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Term
Limited symptom attacks are:
a characteristic of panic disorder.
panic attacks consisting of fewer than four symptoms.
unpredictable somatic ailments.
typically seen in individuals with agoraphobia with panic. |
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Definition
| panic attacks consisting of fewer than four symptoms. |
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Term
Research using panic provocation agents has revealed:
the neurobiological basis for panic disorder.
that there is no biological explanation for panic disorder.
flaws in the studies using sodium lactate infusion.
that there are probably multiple biological explanations for panic disorder. |
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Definition
| that there are probably multiple biological explanations for panic disorder. |
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Term
According to the psychoanalytic view, what makes generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) different from specific phobias?
Defense mechanisms are not functional in GAD.
Different defense mechanisms are employed by those with GAD and those with specific phobias.
The underlying conflict in GAD is between the ego and the superego, while it is between the id and ego in specific phobias.
Individuals with specific phobias suffer from self-hate and project this emotion on the feared stimulus. |
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Definition
| Defense mechanisms are not functional in GAD. |
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Term
How do cognitive factors affect the onset and maintenance of social phobia?
Explain and provide 3 specific examples to illustrate your understanding. |
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Definition
| Answer: Cognitive factors play a role in both the onset and maintenance of social phobia. It has been suggested that those who develop social phobias may tend to expect that others will reject them or view them negatively, setting the stage for a fear of any situation in which one will be evaluated. An expectation that one will behave in a socially unacceptable fashion can also contribute to the development of social phobia, as well as increase the chance that one's behaviour will be unacceptable. Thus, both negative expectations of how one will be perceived and how one will act can contribute to social phobia. These cognitive distortions may then maintain social phobia by increasing social awkwardness and a belief in negative evaluations. There is also some evidence to suggest that perceptions of uncontrollability and unpredictability, possibly resulting from social defeat, may also play a role in the development of social phobia. |
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Term
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Definition
| Anxiety involves a general feeling of apprehension about possible future danger, whereas fear is an alarm reaction that occurs in response to immediate danger. The DSM has iden- tified a group of disorders—known as the anxiety disor- ders—that share symptoms of clinically significant anxiety or fear. Fear also nvolves activation of the “fight-or-flight” response of the autonomic nervous system. |
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Term
| Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) |
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Definition
| In DSM-5 this trend has gone a step further. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is no longer classified as an anxiety disorder. Instead, it is now listed in its own category of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders ( |
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Term
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Definition
| When the fear response occurs in the absence of any obvious external danger, we say the person has had a spontaneous or uncued panic attack. |
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Term
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Definition
| except that panic attacks are often accompanied by a sub- jective sense of impending doom, including fears of dying, going crazy, or losing control. These latter cognitive symp- toms do not generally occur during fear states. Thus, fear and panic have three components: 1. cognitive/subjective components (e.g., “I’m going to die”) 2. physiological components (e.g., increased heart rate and heavy breathing) 3. behavioral components (e.g., a strong urge to escape or flee). |
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Term
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Definition
| Anxiety In contrast to fear and panic, the anxiety response pattern is a complex blend of unpleasant emotions and cognitions that is both more oriented to the future and much more diffuse than fear |
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Term
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Definition
| neuroticism—a proneness or disposition to experience negative mood states that is a common risk factor for both anxiety and mood disorders |
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Term
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Definition
| For each disorder, graduated exposure to feared cues, objects, and situations—until fear or anxiety begins to habituate—constitutes the single most powerful thera- peutic ingredient. PLus *cognitive restructuring and *medication Medi- cations also can be useful in treating all disorders except specific phobias, and nearly all tend to fall into two pri- mary medication categories: antianxiety medications (anxiolytics) and antidepressant medications. |
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Term
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Definition
| Phobias are much more common in women than in men, although the gender ratio varies by type of phobia. |
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Term
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Definition
| Vicarious Conditioning Direct traumatic conditioning in which a person has a terrifying experience in the presence of a neutral object or situation is not the only way that peo- ple can learn irrational, phobic fears. Simply watching a phobic person behaving fearfully with his or her phobic object can be distressing to the observer and can result in fear being transmitted from one person to another through vicarious or observational classical conditioning. In addi- tion, watching a nonfearful person undergoing a frighten- ing experience can also lead to vicarious conditioning. |
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Term
| Evolutionary Preparedness for Learning Certain Fears and Phobias |
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Definition
| This prepared learning occurs because, over the course of evolution, those pri- mates and humans who rapidly acquired fears of certain objects or situations that posed real threats to our early ancestors may have enjoyed a selective advantage (mean- ing, they survived more often than those who had no fear of such things). Thus, “prepared” fears are not inborn or innate but rather are easily acquired or especially resistant to extinction. Guns, motorcycles, and chainsaws, by con- trast, were not present in our early evolutionary history and so did not convey any such selective advantage. |
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Term
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Definition
| Another study found that the heritabil- ity of animal phobias was separate from the heritability of complex phobias such as social phobia and agoraphobia |
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Term
| An enormous body of literature has shown that the most effective treatment for specific phobias is exposure therapy— |
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Definition
a form of behavior therapy that involves controlled expo- sure to the stimuli or situations that elicit phobic fear
The use of cognitive restructuring techniques alone has not produced results as good as those using exposure-based techniques, and the addition of cognitive techniques to exposure therapy has generally not added much |
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Term
| Behaviorally inhibited infants who are easily distressed by unfamiliar |
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Definition
stimuli and who are shy and avoidant are more likely to become fearful during childhood and, by adolescence, to show increased risk of developing social phobia
Nevertheless, these studies suggest that an even larger proportion of variance in who develops social phobia is due to nonshared environmental factors, which is consis- tent with a strong role for learning. |
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Term
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Definition
| Panic disorder is defined and characterized by the occur- rence of panic attacks that often seem to come “out of the blue.” According to the DSM-5 criteria for panic disorder, the person must have experienced recurrent, unexpected attacks and must have been persistently concerned about having another attack or worried about the consequences of having an attack for at least a month (often referred to as anticipatory anxiety). |
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Term
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Definition
Typically people with agoraphobia are also frightened by their own bodily sensations, so they also avoid activities that will create arousal such as exercising, watching scary movies, drink- ing caffeine, and even engaging in sexual activity.
agoraphobia the most commonly feared and avoided situations include streets and crowded places such as shop- ping malls, movie theaters, and stores. |
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Term
There is a broad range of these so-called "panic provocation procedures"
(BIOCHEMICAL ABNORMALITIES) |
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Definition
some of these laboratory tests involve infusions of sodium lactate (a substance resembling the lactate our bodies produce during exercise; Gorman et al., 1989), inhaling air with altered amounts of carbon dioxide (Woods et al., 1987), or ingesting large amounts of caffeine (Uhde, 1990). In each case, such procedures produce panic attacks in panic disorder clients at a much higher rate than in normal subjects (Barlow, 2002).
biological chal- lenge procedures have in common is that they put stress on certain neurobiological systems, which in turn produce intense physical symptoms of arousal (such as increased heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure). |
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Term
| COGNITIVE THEORY OF PANIC |
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Definition
people with panic disorder are hypersensitive to their bodily sensations and are very prone to giving them the most dire interpretation possible
For example a person who develops a panic disorder might notice that his heart is racing and con- clude that he is having a heart attack, or notice that he is dizzy, which may lead to fainting or to the thought that he may have a brain tumor. These very frightening thoughts may cause many more physical symptoms of anxiety, which further fuel the catastrophic thoughts, leading to a vicious circle culminating in a panic attack
In addition, a brief explanation of what to expect in a panic provocation study can prevent or reduce panic symptoms |
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Term
| interoceptive conditioning (or exteroceptive conditioning) |
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Definition
| A comprehensive learning theory of panic disor- der developed during the past few decades suggests that initial panic attacks become associated with initially neutral internal (interoceptive) and external (exterocep- tive) cues through an interoceptive conditioning (or exteroceptive conditioning) process, which leads anxiety to become conditioned to these CSs, and the more intense the panic attack, the more robust the conditioning that will occur. |
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Term
|
Definition
| Another study found that the heritabil- ity of animal phobias was separate from the heritability of complex phobias such as social phobia and agoraphobia |
|
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Term
| An enormous body of literature has shown that the most effective treatment for specific phobias is exposure therapy— |
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Definition
a form of behavior therapy that involves controlled expo- sure to the stimuli or situations that elicit phobic fear
The use of cognitive restructuring techniques alone has not produced results as good as those using exposure-based techniques, and the addition of cognitive techniques to exposure therapy has generally not added much |
|
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Term
| Behaviorally inhibited infants who are easily distressed by unfamiliar |
|
Definition
stimuli and who are shy and avoidant are more likely to become fearful during childhood and, by adolescence, to show increased risk of developing social phobia
Nevertheless, these studies suggest that an even larger proportion of variance in who develops social phobia is due to nonshared environmental factors, which is consis- tent with a strong role for learning. |
|
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Term
|
Definition
| Panic disorder is defined and characterized by the occur- rence of panic attacks that often seem to come “out of the blue.” According to the DSM-5 criteria for panic disorder, the person must have experienced recurrent, unexpected attacks and must have been persistently concerned about having another attack or worried about the consequences of having an attack for at least a month (often referred to as anticipatory anxiety). |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
Typically people with agoraphobia are also frightened by their own bodily sensations, so they also avoid activities that will create arousal such as exercising, watching scary movies, drink- ing caffeine, and even engaging in sexual activity.
agoraphobia the most commonly feared and avoided situations include streets and crowded places such as shop- ping malls, movie theaters, and stores. |
|
|
Term
There is a broad range of these so-called "panic provocation procedures"
(BIOCHEMICAL ABNORMALITIES) |
|
Definition
some of these laboratory tests involve infusions of sodium lactate (a substance resembling the lactate our bodies produce during exercise; Gorman et al., 1989), inhaling air with altered amounts of carbon dioxide (Woods et al., 1987), or ingesting large amounts of caffeine (Uhde, 1990). In each case, such procedures produce panic attacks in panic disorder clients at a much higher rate than in normal subjects (Barlow, 2002).
biological chal- lenge procedures have in common is that they put stress on certain neurobiological systems, which in turn produce intense physical symptoms of arousal (such as increased heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure). |
|
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Term
| COGNITIVE THEORY OF PANIC |
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Definition
people with panic disorder are hypersensitive to their bodily sensations and are very prone to giving them the most dire interpretation possible
For example a person who develops a panic disorder might notice that his heart is racing and con- clude that he is having a heart attack, or notice that he is dizzy, which may lead to fainting or to the thought that he may have a brain tumor. These very frightening thoughts may cause many more physical symptoms of anxiety, which further fuel the catastrophic thoughts, leading to a vicious circle culminating in a panic attack
In addition, a brief explanation of what to expect in a panic provocation study can prevent or reduce panic symptoms |
|
|
Term
| interoceptive conditioning (or exteroceptive conditioning) |
|
Definition
| A comprehensive learning theory of panic disor- der developed during the past few decades suggests that initial panic attacks become associated with initially neutral internal (interoceptive) and external (exterocep- tive) cues through an interoceptive conditioning (or exteroceptive conditioning) process, which leads anxiety to become conditioned to these CSs, and the more intense the panic attack, the more robust the conditioning that will occur. |
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Term
| generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) |
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Definition
generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) may be diag- nosed. DSM-5 criteria specify that the worry must occur on more days than not for at least 6 months and that it must be experienced as difficult to control (see DSM-5 criteria box). The worry must be about a number of different events or activities, and its content cannot be exclusively related to the worry associated with another concurrent disorder, such as the possibility of having a panic attack.
People suffering from GAD live in a relatively con- stant, future-oriented mood state of anxious apprehen- sion, chronic tension, worry, and diffuse uneasiness that they cannot control |
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Term
| Why people with GAD worry (when they know it increases anxiety) |
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Definition
- Superstitious avoidance of catastrophe (“Worrying makes it less likely that the feared event will occur”)
• Avoidance of deeper emotional topics (“Worrying about most of the things I worry about is a way to distract myself from worrying about even more emotional things, things that I don’t want to think about”
- Coping and preparation (“Worrying about a predicted negative event helps me to prepare for its occur
Because worry suppresses physiological responding, it also insulates the person from fully experiencing or processing the topic that she or he is worrying about, and it is known that such full processing is necessary if extinction of that anxiety is to occur. |
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Term
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Definition
Several large twin studies have revealed that heritability estimates vary as a function of one’s definition of GAD, and indicate that 15 to 20 per- cent of the variance in liability to GAD is due to genetic fac- tors
It appears that highly anxious people have a kind of functional deficiency in GABA, which ordi- narily plays an important role in the way our brain inhibits anxiety in stressful situations. |
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Term
| obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (New DSM-5 disorder) |
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Definition
| This new category includes not only OCD but also body dysmorphic disorder, hoarding disorder, excoriation (skin-picking) disorder, and trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling). |
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Term
| OCD (Obsessions and Compulsions) |
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Definition
Obsessions are persistent and recurrent intrusive thoughts, images, or impulses that are experienced as disturbing, inappro- priate, and uncontrollable. People who have such obses- sions actively try to resist or suppress them or to neutralize them with some other thought or action.
Compulsions involve overt repetitive behaviors that are performed as lengthy rituals (such as hand washing, checking, putting things in order over and over again). Compulsions may also involve more covert mental rituals (such as counting, praying, or saying certain words silently over and over again). |
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Term
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Definition
| Diagnosis requires that obsessions and compulsions take at least 1 hour per day, and in severe cases they may take most of the per- son’s waking hours. It is important to note that normal and abnormal obsessions and compulsive behaviors exist on a continuum, differing in the frequency and intensity of the obsessions and in the degrees to which the obsessions and compulsions are resisted and are troubling |
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Term
| The most effective treatment for OCD is a behav- ioral treatment called exposure and response prevention |
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Definition
| The exposure com- ponent involves having individuals with OCD repeatedly expose themselves (either in guided fantasy or directly) to stimuli that provoke their obsessions (e.g., for someone with contamination fears this may involve touching a toilet seat in a public bathroom). The response prevention com- ponent requires that they then refrain from engaging in the rituals that they ordinarily would perform to reduce their anxiety or distress. Preventing the rituals is essential so that they can see that if they allow enough time to pass, the anxiety created by the obsession will dissipate naturally down to at least 40 to 50 on a 100-point scale, even if this takes several hours. |
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Term
| Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) |
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Definition
| Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) was classified as a somatoform disorder in DSM-IV-TR because it involves preoccupation with certain aspects of the body. However, because of its very strong similarities with OCD, it was moved out of the somatoform category and into the OCD and related disorders category in DSM-5. |
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Term
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Definition
| Trichotillomania (also known as compulsive hair pulling) has as its primary symptom the urge to pull out one’s hair from anywhere on the body (most often the scalp, eye- brows, or arms), resulting in noticeable hair loss. |
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