Panic Disorder
o Unpredictable
o Strikes quickly, only lasts for a short amount of time
o Escalation caused by intense anxiety
o Up to several minutes of intense fear
o Impending doom, something bad is going to happen to the person
o Symptoms can be difficult to breathe, heart palpitations, jittery, dizziness, unable to
swallow, hot/ cold flashes, excessive sweating, and nausea
o Can be perceived as a heart attack
o Definition:
o An anxiety disorder in which someone will have unpredictable episodes of terror
that can last several minutes and come on with extreme, and frightening
symptoms
o Applying Perspectives:
o Learning:
 Fear Conditioning Use of classical conditioning to cause extreme anxiety surrounding
a certain area or sensory stimulus
 Cognition Feel loss of control, extreme intrusive thoughts
o Biological:
 Genes Regulate neurotransmitters that control brains alarm centers, mood
and sleep
 The Brain Over arousal of areas of the brain that control impulse
o Treatment:
o Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy- talking therapy that aims to change the way
you think and behave through talking
o Medication
o Examples:
o When driving, Mary would have trouble breathing, experience heart trouble and
become shaky/jittery causing her to potentially lose control of her car.
Phobias
o 3 main types:
o Specific- phobia of a specific object
 Ex. Thunderstorms, spiders
o Social- phobia of social situations and the judgement of others when put in a
social situation
 Extreme shyness
 Ex. Public speaking, going to parties
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o Complex- persistent phobia where anxiety or panic attacks can be caused even
when the object/situation is not present
 Ex. Arachnophobia, xenophobia
Agoraphobia-avoiding situations that may bring on severe anxiety or panic attacks
Definition:
o An anxiety disorder that has a persistent irrational fear, that causes a person to
avoid a specific situation or object
Applying Perspectives:
o Learning:
 Fear conditioning Anxiety in an area/place or experiencing something sensory that is
associated with a phobia that causes one to fear that place, sound,
taste, ect.
 Stimulus generalization get scratched by a kitten, fear all cats
 Observational learning Acquiring a fear due to seeing another person’s fear
 Cognition Interpretations and irrational beliefs cause phobias
o Biological:
 Natural Selection Biologically prepared for fears faced by ancestors
 Ex. People living in places with no poisonous snakes, still have a
fear of them
Treatments:
o Cognitive behavioral Psychotherapy- talking therapy that aims to change the way
you think and behave through talking
o Psychodynamic psychotherapy- revealing unconscious conflicts that may be
inducing anxiety
Examples:
o Mary had a complex phobia of driving, she was scared to get into her vehicle in
fear that she would have an anxiety attack
PTSD
o Exposed to a traumatic event
o Typically war veterans, but can occur after any experience that causes extreme
psychological damage such as rape, violence, natural disaster, and being
kidnapped
o Nightmares and haunting memories
o Persistent
o Depression and anxiety can come on days, months, and years (although rarely years) after
atraumatic incident
o Doesn’t happen to everyone who ever experiences a traumatic event
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o Ex. After 9/11 not everyone in NY or DC had severe trauma symptoms over a
month after the event
o Not everyone who was involved in the war has all the long term effects
The higher the distress during a particular situation, the higher chance that person has of
acquiring PTSD
Psychological reenactments
o May become obsessive compulsive in order to distract themselves from the
reenactments
Definition:
o An anxiety disorder that causes haunting memories, social withdrawals,
nightmares, extreme anxiety, this feeling has to linger for more than 4 weeks to be
classified as PTSD
Applying Perspectives
o Learning:
 Fear conditioning Unpredictable, uncontrollable anxiety after a traumatic event
 Ex. Returning to the scene of where he was shot, jimmy has
uncontrollable anxiety, and experiences a flashback of the moment
 Cognition
 Inability to turn off intrusive thoughts  leading to horrible
flashbacks and nightmares
o Biological:
 The Brain Over-arousal of part of brain that involves impulse control
Treatment:
o Cognitive behavioral Psychotherapy- talking therapy that aims to change the way
you think and behave through talking
o Psychodynamic psychotherapy- revealing unconscious conflicts that may be
inducing anxiety
Acute Stress Disorder
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PTSD that lasts less than 4 weeks
Usually entails distortions, and detachment
Post Traumatic Growth
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Challenging circumstances leading to positive psychological growth and advancement
Increased appreciation for life
Reveals the transformative power of struggling with something
Types of Anxiety Disorder Symptoms
o Moodo Tension, panic, apprehension
o Cognitive-
o Aloof, brooding, preoccupation, frustration
o Somatico Muscle tension, sweating, hyperventilation
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General Anxiety Disorder: Persistent uncomfortable feelings that are usually unexplainable.
o Possible causes: Genetic predisposition, maltreatment in childhood, relatively recent
"triggers".
o Symptoms: constant feeling that bad things will happen, jittery, tense, hyperactive,
problems falling asleep or staying asleep, increase arousal of the heart, agitated
 Symptoms may last anywhere from a single month to many years
 May lead to high blood pressure and is often accompanied with depression
o Freud: Free floating: people cannot identify a cause therefore making it harder to deal
with the illness and much easier to avoid the cause
o Examples:
 (From Anxiety Disorder Video) Donna was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety
disorder.
 She was constantly worrying about her family and her finances and felt
that it was all on her to do.
 She was always trying to find something that would explain her anxiety
but because GAD has many physical manifestations many of her doctors
made fald assumptions of what she had and in turn Donna went years
without being diagnosed.
o Once she started to see a psychologist, they used cognitive
psychotherapy to help her symptoms. Together they talked
about how to look past her anxiety/how to control it on her
own.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Unwanted and persistent thoughts and urges to do certain tasks
ritually.
o Disorder vs Normality: It's normal for people to want things to be clean and in order, or
to stress about certain things. But, once it crosses the line into interfering with everyday
activities is when OCD becomes a possibility.
o Symptoms: Having compulsion or obsessions, knowing that such compulsion or
obsessions are irrational but the anxiety is what forces them to continue.
 Compulsions: redundant actions that one feels compelled to do
 Excessive cleaning on one self (hand washing)
 Repeating rituals (walk in/out of door certain number of times)
 Checking appliances, homework, door locks, car brakes
 Obsessions: unwanted reoccurring thoughts
 Concern with germs, toxins, or dirt (constant cleaning of house)
 Thinking something terrible is about to happen
 Needing things to be in symmetry or in order (symmetrical living room
arrangement)
o Who's at risk: tends to be more common in teenagers and young adults, symptoms
usually decrease as people age.
o Examples:
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(from Anxiety Disorder Video) Phil was diagnosed with OCD
 As a kid his father was always angry and very critical of himself and his
family. One day Phil lashed back at his dad and his dad died shortly
after. This created an idea and a fear within Phil that when he acts on
anger it could kill people
 He was also currently having marital problems.
o Trigger: His most recent trigger was the development of his
marital problems, and his childhood history added with his
inability to get mad all aided his recent development of OCD.
o Experiments/studies: 144 people were diagnosed with OCD at Swedish Hospital, on
their 40 year follow up appointment most people symptoms had lessened and 1 out of 5
had completely recovered
Perspectives
o Biopsychosocial: Idea that social, biological, and psychological factors all combine to
create a disorder.
 One factor may be stronger than the other 2 but all factors are somewhat
apparent.
 Social Influences: cultural differences may lead to a spike in certain disorders in
localized places.
 Example: Eating disorders have become significantly more apparent in
western cultures.
 Genetic: certain people have certain genetic predispositions to some disorders
 Psychological: People's psychological states and how their brains may be wired.
o Learning Perspective (mainly applies to phobias)
 Fear conditioning: When anything bad or unpredictable happens, a fear may
arise from it
 because of conditioning, any event that may be painful, scary, or
unexpected can lead to very large phobias
o Example: (from the book) when someone's car was hit by a car
who ran a stop sign, that driver who was hit would twinge when
another car approach from a side street.
 Stimulus Generalization: when, for example, someone gets bit by a dog
and develops a fear of all dogs
 Reinforcement: helps to keep the fear
o avoiding the situation may decrease the anxiety but it only fuels
the phobia
 Observational Learning: Seeing other fears and learning to fear the same thing
 Example: (form the book): Monkeys in the wild seem to all fear snakes
but lab monkeys do not fear snakes. 6 monkeys in the wils were
observed and their offspring were put in labs to test the phobia of
snakes.
o offspring in labs did not have any sort of fear
o
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In the wild, after watching the monkeys back away from food
when snakes were around, all the other monkeys seemed to act
in a similar way. learning to fear the snake.
 Cognition: Idea that everyone has different interpretation of things, some of
which may arouse fears.
 Example: (from the book) a house may creak because of the wind but
one may also think the house creaks at night because someone else is in
it.
 People with anxiety tend to be more on the hypervigilant side
o Example: (from the book) a racing heart means a heart attack, a
single spider may manifest into hundreds.
o Example: (form the book) an simple disagreement with
someone may seem as if it was a huge fight.
Biological perspective: explains why some groups of people may be predisposed to
phobias
 Natural Selection
 As humans, over the years, we have become prepared to face threats
(snakes, spiders, darkness) and those have turned into phobias as a way
of protection
 In terms of OCD, the compulsions are driven by an "exaggerated"
survival need
o Examples: (from the book) checking territorial boundaries has
now become checking doors, locking and unlocking them.
 Genes: Some people have genes that make them more fragile while others have
genes that allows them to handle situations better.
 identical twins may develop similar phobia even when they are not
raised together
 Experiment: researches have been able to find 17 genes that are all
present with people who have anxiety disorders. Others have found
genes that belong only to those with OCD
 Serotonin and Glutamate: Both are being researched for the their
potential chance of contributing to an anxiety disorder. Serotonin
regulates sleep and mood while high levels of glutamate can lead to
over activity
 The Brain: Over arousal of the certain areas in the brain are manifested because
of biology
 OCD: when the brain thinks something is wrong it creates "mental
hiccups" which could explain redundant actions and thoughts
o anterior cingulate cortex shows elevated activity (controls our
actions and checks for error)
 Fear circuits are created in the amygdala when a fear is developed.
The DSM
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Diagnostic + statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM + IV)
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Attempts to
o 1) Describe + classify the disorder
o 2) Recommend courses of treatments
o 3) Explain research into causes of disorders
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5 Axis
o + Axis 1: clinical syndromes and addresses the major disorders
o + Axis 2: Personality disorders (longstanding disturbances of personality that
disrupt…)
o + Axis 3: Physical Disorders… important because may be affecting psychological
condition
o + Axis 4: Severity of psychological Stressors
o + Axis 5 Assesses a person’s level of functioning
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Problems with DSM
o 1) Danger of over diagnosis
o 2) Power of diagnostic labels
o 3) Confusing mental disorders with normal problems
o 4) The illusion of objectivity
The Medical Model
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All mental conditions are identifiable treatable or curable
Abnormal Behavior is the result of
Physical Problems
Physical Problems can be diagnosed
The condition can be treated