Download Anxiety Disorders and Somatoform Disorders

Marion Weeks
Jenks High School
Anxiety Disorders in general
 Diagnosis occurs when overwhelming anxiety disrupts
social or occupational functioning or produces
significant distress.
 Manifestations of anxiety
 Cognitive:

Thought processes range from generalized worry to
overwhelming fear and often focus on various possibilities of
impending doom.
Anxiety Disorders in general
 Behavioral:


The avoidance of an anxiety-provoking situation may be
practiced.
Example, persons may be unwilling to leave home.
 Somatic:


Numerous physiological complaints are experienced due to
activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
Examples:
 Stomach aches
 Headaches
 Shakiness
Specific Anxiety Disorders
 Panic Disorder
 Recurrent and unexpected panic attacks are severe
 Involve feelings of terror and physiological involvement
 Attacks lead to concern about future attacks or losing
control.

Example
 Pounding heart
 Difficulty breathing
 May result in individual being fearful of having a panic
attack in public or of leaving home.
Panic Disorder
Symptoms
Minute-long episodes of intense dread which
may include feelings of terror, chest pains,
choking, or other frightening sensations.
Anxiety is a component of both disorders. It
occurs more in the panic disorder, making
people avoid situations that cause it.
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Specific Anxiety Disorders
 Generalized anxiety disorder
 Characterized by persistent high levels of anxiety and
excessive worry with symptoms that present for at least
six months.
 Physiological responses are similar to, although not as
severe as, those experienced in panic disorder, but they
are more persistent.
Specific Anxiety Disorders
 Phobia
 A persistent, irrational, unrealistic fear of specific
objects or situations.
 Exposure to a feared stimulus produces intense fear or
panic.
 Anxiety dissipates when the phobic situation is not
being confronted.
Phobia
Marked by a persistent and irrational fear of an
object or situation that disrupts behavior.
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Specific Anxiety Disorders
 Three subcategories include:



Simple phobias
 Claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces)
 Arachnophobia(spiders)
Agoraphobia
 The irrational fear of open spaces
 Leads to a fear of leaving home or other safe havens.
Social phobia
 Social situations
 Public speaking
Specific Anxiety Disorders
 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
 Involves two patterns
 Obsessions

Thoughts, images, or impulses that recur or persist despite a
person’s efforts to suppress them
 Compulsions
 Repetitive, purposeful, but undesired acts performed in a
ritualized manner in response to an obsession
 Persons with the disorder acknowledge the
senselessness of their behavior; however, when anxiety
rises, the ritualized behavior to relieve the tension
cannot be resisted.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Persistence of unwanted thoughts (obsessions)
and urges to engage in senseless rituals
(compulsions) that cause distress.
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Brain Imaging
A PET scan of the brain
of a person with
Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder (OCD). High
metabolic activity (red)
in the frontal lobe areas
are involved with
directing attention.
Brain image of an OCD
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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Four or more weeks of the following symptoms
constitute post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD):
1. Haunting memories
2. Nightmares
3. Social withdrawal
Bettmann/ Corbis
4. Jumpy anxiety
5. Sleep problems
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Resilience to PTSD
Only about 10% of women and 20% of men
react to traumatic situations and develop PTSD.
Holocaust survivors show remarkable resilience
against traumatic situations.
All major religions of the world suggest that
surviving a trauma leads to the growth of an
individual.
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Explaining anxiety disorders
 The learning perspective
 Generalized anxiety has been linked with a classical
conditioning of fear and the attendant stimulus.
 Avoidance relieves fear through negative reinforcement.
 The cognitive perspective
 Observational learning can produce fear which results
in anxiety.

Example
 If a parent fears dogs, the child may learn this fear through
observation.
Explaining anxiety disorders
 The biological perspective
 Fears that represent age-old threats, such as heights or
spiders, may have contributed to our survival and have
an evolutionary basis.
 Some people are genetically predisposed to fears and
high anxiety.
 Disorders tend to run in families.
 The biopsychosocial perspective
 View anxiety as having a biological involvement and
learning component, both of which influenced by
culture.
Somatoform disorders
 These disorders are characterized by complaints of
physical symptoms that have no organic or
physiological explanation– they are psychologically
based.
 Symptoms are not considered voluntary or under
conscious control.
Specific somatoform disorders
 Somatization disorder
 Characterized by multiple physical complaints with no
organic explanation and an onset before age 30.
 Conversion disorder
 Characterized by specific physical complaint.

Examples
 Paralysis of legs
 Blindness
 Patients strongly believe there is impairment, but may
show less distress than with a real loss.
Specific somatoform disorders
 Hypochondriasis
 Characterized by persistent preoccupation with one’s
health and physical condition, despite the fact that
genuine symptoms of a disorder are lacking.
Factitious Disorder
 Munchausen’s Syndrome–
 Patients feign physical or emotional illness in order to
assume the role as patient
 Patients have added sugar to urine samples, used
sandpaper, chemicals, or heat to create rashes and
lesions, drank animal blood so they could vomit blood,
swallowed corrosive chemicals, overdosed on
psychoactive drugs
 Disease is difficult to diagnose and often requires being
“caught” in the act.
Explaining somatoform disorders
 These disorders now constitute only 5% of all disorders
treated.
 Decreasing incidence seems linked to our growing
understanding of physiological and psychological
disorders.
 The behavioral perspective
 Suggests that avoidance behavior
 Becoming ill to avoid or reduce anxiety-arousing stress
 Reinforced in two ways:
 Anxiety is reduced
 There are interpersonal gains in terms of sympathy and support.