Scribd
Upload
27 views37 pages

Anxiety B

This document summarizes different aspects of anxiety including phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological components. It describes several types of anxiety disorders such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The psychodynamic, behavioral, biological, and cognitive approaches to understanding anxiety are also discussed. A study on attentional bias in social phobia is presented which found that socially anxious individuals avoided negative and positive faces in a social threat condition.

Uploaded by

tiankaunang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
27 views37 pages

Anxiety B

This document summarizes different aspects of anxiety including phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological components. It describes several types of anxiety disorders such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The psychodynamic, behavioral, biological, and cognitive approaches to understanding anxiety are also discussed. A study on attentional bias in social phobia is presented which found that socially anxious individuals avoided negative and positive faces in a social threat condition.

Uploaded by

tiankaunang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 37

Anxiety Disorders

Different aspects of
Anxiety
Phenomenological
Affective: dread, tension, worry
Cognitive: expectations of an
inability to cope, impaired
cognitive ability

Behavioural
Impaired motor functioning and
avoidance

Physiological
increased blood pressure, heart
rate, breathing; disruptions in GI
functioning and dizziness

Types of Anxiety
Disorders

Panic Disorder
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Phobias
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Panic Disorder
Panic Attack
Cued (situationally bound) v.s.
Uncued (unexpected) panic
attacks
Panic Disorder

Panic Disorder:
Agoraphobia
Fear of being in a situation
where having a panic attack
would be dangerous or where
escape would be impossible

Generalized Anxiety
Disorder
Chronic state of diffuse anxiety

Phobias
Phobias involve
intense, persistent fear of
something that poses no real
threat
avoidance of the feared
object/situation

Specific Phobia
fear of circumscribed objects or
situations

Phobias

Algophobia
Astraphobia
Pathophobia
Monophobia
Mysophobia
Nyctophobia
Ochlophobia

-pain
-thunderstorms
-disease
-being alone
-contamination
-darkness
-crowds

Phobias: Social Phobia


Fear of social embarrassment or
humiliation
public speaking
eating in public
using public bathrooms

Impact on self confidence and


restricts social activity

Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder
Intense fear and helplessness in
response to events involving
actual or threatened death or
serious injury.
Acute Stress Disorder
symptoms last for 2 days - 4
weeks

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder


symptoms last at least 1 month

Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder
Obsession
unwanted thought or image that
keeps intruding into awareness

Compulsion
an action that a person feels
compelled to repeat again and
again despite a lack of desire to
do so

The Psychodynamic
Approach to Anxiety
Anxiety is a signal that the ego
is having a hard time mediating
between reality, id and
superego.
Different anxiety disorders are
the result of different defense
mechanisms used to cope.

The Psychodynamic
Approach to Anxiety:
Attachment Theories
Bowlby
disturbances in parent-child bond
leads to anxious attachment and
a vulnerability to anxiety
disorders later in life

The Behavioural
Approach to Anxiety
Mowrer (1948) Avoidance
learning
1) classical (respondent)
conditioning
2) negative reinforcement

The Behavioural
Approach to Anxiety
Barlow (1988) Anxiety
Sensitivity or Fear of Fear

The Behavioural
Approach to Anxiety
Treatment:
systematic desensitization
exposure
flooding

The Biological
Approach to Anxiety
Genetic Component
family and twin studies suggest a
genetic component in most
anxiety disorders
panic disorder shows the strongest
genetic component and
generalized anxiety disorder the
least

The Biological
Approach to Anxiety
Suffocation false alarm
hypothesis of panic disorder
serotonin and basal ganglia
abnormalities in OCD
hormonal theory of PTSD
State-dependent learning

The Cognitive Approach


to Anxiety
Individuals misperceive and
misinterpret internal and
external stimuli

Cognitive Appraisal
Stimulus--->Appraisal--->
Response
evaluation of stimulus based on
memories, beliefs, and
expectations

Information Processing
Schema
how we understand the
information we take in from the
environment

Selective Attention
what information we take in

Cognitive Approach to
Panic Disorder
Catastrophic interpretations of
bodily sensations
Feeling of control
Some Problems:
panic attacks during sleep
why do catastrophic
interpretations develop

Anxiety and Selective


Attention

Bodybags
Nam
Firefight
Landmine
Explosion
Airlift

Several cognitive models of


anxiety suggest that attentional
biases to threat cues cause and
maintain anxiety disorders.
Empirical findings:
Lavy and van den Hout (1993),
individuals with spider phobia
show an attentional bias to spiders
Ehlers and Breuer (1995),
individuals with panic disorder
show an attentional bias towards
unpleasant body cues

Attentional bias in
Social Phobia

Fixation Cross:
1000ms

Pair of
Pictures:
500ms

Probe Display:
until response

E
Temporal
sequence of
events for
each trial

F/E
judgement

Participants
Two kinds of participants (high
and low social anxiety)
Participants were university
students selected for high and
low social anxiety (FNE, also
measured trait anxiety)

Experimental Conditions
Two kinds of experimental
conditions (threat and no threat)
Threat: Half of the participants
were told the experiment was an
assessment of social skills and
public speaking ability.

Picture Displays
Three kinds of picture displays
(positive, negative and neutral
face, each paired with a
household object)

Experimental Design
Two kinds of participants (high
and low social anxiety)
Two kinds of experimental
conditions (threat and no threat)
Three kinds of faces (negative,
neutral and positive) each
displayed with a household
object (clocks, chairs etc.)

Bias Score

Bias
Score =

RT to
identify
probe when the face and
probe are in
opposite
positions

RT to
identify
probe when
the face and
probe are in
the same
position

Fixation Cross:
1000ms

Pair of
Pictures:
500ms

Probe Display:
until response

E
Temporal
sequence of
events for
each trial

F/E
judgement

Results
In the social threat condition,
the high socially anxious
participants avoided negative
and positive faces,
whereas the low socially
anxious participants showed no
bias.

Discussion of Results
Lavy and van den Hout (1993)
found that spider phobics show
an attentional bias towards
pictures of spiders.
Why are spider phobics and social
phobics different?

Discussion of Results
How might this attentional bias
(to avoid emotionally
expressive faces) contribute to
the maintenance of social
phobia?

Mansell, et al. (1999).


Social anxiety and
attention away from
emotional faces.
Cognition and Emotion,
13(6), 673-690.

You might also like