Module 41: Anxiety Disorders, OCD, and PTSD

Question 1

Anxiety Disorders

Answer 1

Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety.

Question 2

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Answer 2

An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

• Excessive and uncontrollable worry that persists for six months or more
• Anxiety is free-floating (not linked to a specific stressor or threat)

Question 3

Panic Disorder

Answer 3

An anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person may experience terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations; often followed by worry over a possible next attack.

Question 4

Agoraphobia

Answer 4

Fear or avoidance of public situations from which escape might be difficult.

Question 5

Phobias

Answer 5

An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.

Question 6

Obsessive - Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Answer 6

A disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions), actions (compulsions), or both.

• Obsessive thoughts —> unwanted and seemingly unending
• Compulsive behaviors —> responses to those thoughts

Question 7

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Answer 7

A disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, hyper vigilance, avoidance of trauma-related stimuli, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.

Question 8

Conditioning

Answer 8

• Through classical conditioning, our fear responses can become linked with formerly neutral objects and events.
• – Even a single event can trigger a phobia
• Generalization —> experience fearful event, fear similar events
• Reinforcement —> anything that enables us to escape a feared situation can reinforce maladaptive behaviors.

Question 9

Cognition

Answer 9

• Thoughts, memories, interpretations, expectations
• Interpretations and expectations shape our reactions
• People with anxiety disorders are hypervigilant
• – Attend more often to threatening stimuli
• – Often interpret stimuli as threatening

Question 10

Biology

Genes

Answer 10

• Some genes influence anxiety disorders by regulating brain levels of neurotransmitters
• – Serotonin —> sleep, mood, and attending to threats
• – Glutamate —> heightens activity in brain’s alarm centers

Question 11

Biology

The Brain

Answer 11

• Experiences change our brain —> paving new pathways
• Traumatic experiences can leave tracks in the brain
• – Creating fear circuits within the amygdala
• Brain danger-detection system hyperactive