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Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by significant feelings of anxiety and fear. Anxiety is a worry about future events, and fear is a reaction to current events. These feelings may cause physical symptoms, such as a fast heart rate and shakiness. There are a number of anxiety disorders including generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, panic disorder, and selective mutism. The disorder differs by what results in the symptoms. People often have more than one anxiety disorder.
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.
Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. While earlier definitions of anhedonia emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is used by researchers to refer to reduced motivation, reduced anticipatory pleasure (wanting), reduced consummatory pleasure (liking), and deficits in reinforcement learning. In the DSM-V, anhedonia is a component of depressive disorders, substance related disorders, psychotic disorders, and personality disorders, where it is defined by either a reduced ability to experience pleasure, or a diminished interest in engaging in pleasurable activities. While the ICD-10 does not explicitly mention anhedonia, the depressive symptom analogous to anhedonia as described in the DSM-V is a loss of interest or pleasure.
Beck's cognitive triad, also known as the negative triad, is a cognitive-therapeutic view of the three key elements of a person's belief system present in depression. It was proposed by Aaron Beck in 1976. The triad forms part of his cognitive theory of depression and the concept is used as part of CBT, particularly in Beck's "Treatment of Negative Automatic Thoughts" (TNAT) approach.
A self-report inventory is a type of psychological test in which a person fills out a survey or questionnaire with or without the help of an investigator. Self-report inventories often ask direct questions about personal interests, values, symptoms, behaviors, and traits or personality types. Inventories are different from tests in that there is no objectively correct answer; responses are based on opinions and subjective perceptions. Most self-report inventories are brief and can be taken or administered within five to 15 minutes, although some, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), can take several hours to fully complete. They are popular because they can be inexpensive to give and to score, and their scores can often show good reliability.
Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.
Social anxiety is nervousness in social situations. Some disorders associated with the social anxiety spectrum include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, autism, eating disorders, and substance use disorders. Individuals higher in social anxiety avert their gazes, show fewer facial expressions, and show difficulty with initiating and maintaining conversation. Trait social anxiety, the stable tendency to experience this nervousness, can be distinguished from state anxiety, the momentary response to a particular social stimulus. Nearly 90% of individuals report feeling symptoms of social anxiety at some point in their lives. Half of the individuals with any social fears meet criteria for social anxiety disorder. The function of social anxiety is to increase arousal and attention to social interactions, inhibit unwanted social behavior, and motivate preparation for future social situations.
The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), created by Aaron T. Beck and other colleagues, is a 21-question multiple-choice self-report inventory that is used for measuring the severity of anxiety in children and adults. The questions used in this measure ask about common symptoms of anxiety that the subject has had during the past week. It is designed for individuals who are of 17 years of age or older and takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. Several studies have found the Beck Anxiety Inventory to be an accurate measure of anxiety symptoms in children and adults.
Rumination is the focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions, according to the Response Styles Theory proposed by Nolen-Hoeksema (1998). Because the Response Styles Theory has been empirically supported, this model of rumination is the most widely used conceptualization. Other theories, however, have proposed different definitions for rumination. For example, in the Goal Progress Theory, rumination is conceptualized not as a reaction to a mood state, but as a "response to failure to progress satisfactorily towards a goal". As such, both rumination and worry are associated with anxiety and other negative emotional states; however, its measures have not been unified.
The biopsychological theory of personality, proposed by research psychologist Jeffrey Alan Gray in 1970, is a well supported model of the general biological processes relevant for human psychology, behavior, and personality. Gray hypothesized the existence of two brain-based systems for controlling a person's interactions with their environment: the behavioural inhibition system (BIS) and the behavioural activation system (BAS). BIS is related to sensitivity to punishment and avoidance motivation. BAS is associated with sensitivity to reward and approach motivation. Psychological scales have been designed to measure these hypothesized systems and study individual differences in personality. Neuroticism, a widely studied personality dimension related to emotional functioning, is positively correlated with BIS scales and negatively correlated with BAS scales.
Cognitive bias modification (CBM) refers to the process of modifying cognitive biases in healthy people and also refers to a growing area of psychological (non-pharmaceutical) therapies for anxiety, depression and addiction called cognitive bias modification therapy (CBMT). CBMT is sub-group of therapies within a growing area of psychological therapies based on modifying cognitive processes with or without accompanying medication and talk therapy, sometimes referred to as applied cognitive processing therapies (ACPT). Other ACPTs include attention training, interpretation modification, approach/avoid training, imagery modification training, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy for PTSD.
The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) is a multiple-choice self-report inventory copyrighted by Pfizer Inc, that is used as a screening and diagnostic tool for mental health disorders of depression, anxiety, alcohol, eating, and somatoform disorders. It is the self-report version of the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD), a diagnostic tool developed in the mid-1990s by Pfizer Inc. The length of the original assessment limited its feasibility; consequently, a shorter version, consisting of 11 multi-part questions - the Patient Health Questionnaire was developed and validated.
A cognitive vulnerability in cognitive psychology is an erroneous belief, cognitive bias, or pattern of thought that predisposes an individual to psychological problems. The vulnerability exists before the symptoms of a psychological disorder appear. After the individual encounters a stressful experience, the cognitive vulnerability shapes a maladaptive response that increases the likelihood of a psychological disorder.
The Children's Depression Inventory is a psychological assessment that rates the severity of symptoms related to depression or dysthymic disorder in children and adolescents. The CDI is a 27-item scale that is self-rated and symptom-oriented. The assessment is now in its second edition. The 27 items on the assessment are grouped into five major factor areas. Clients rate themselves based on how they feel and think, with each statement being identified with a rating from 0 to 2. The CDI was developed by American clinical psychologist Maria Kovacs, PhD, and was published in 1979. It was developed by using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) of 1967 for adults as a model. The CDI is a widely used and accepted assessment for the severity of depressive symptoms in children and youth, with high reliability. It also has a well-established validity using a variety of different techniques, and good psychometric properties. The CDI is a Level B test.
The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) is a self-report screening questionnaire for anxiety disorders. The questionnaire was developed by Boris Birmaher, Suneeta Khetarpal, Marlane Cully, David Brent, and Sandra Mackenzie in 1997. The SCARED is a brief self-report instrument intended for children, adolescents, and their parents to complete in about 10 minutes, and can discriminate between depression and anxiety, as well as among distinct anxiety disorders. The SCARED is useful for generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, phobic disorders, and potentially school anxiety problems. Most available self-report instruments that measure anxiety in children look at general aspects of anxiety rather than DSM categorizations. The SCARED was developed as an instrument for both children and their parents that would encompass several DSM-IV categorizations of the anxiety disorders: somatic/panic, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, social phobia, and school phobia.
The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) is a self-report questionnaire designed to help detect bipolar disorder. It focuses on symptoms of hypomania and mania, which are the mood states that separate bipolar disorders from other types of depression and mood disorder. It has 5 main questions, and the first question has 13 parts, for a total of 17 questions. The MDQ was originally tested with adults, but it also has been studied in adolescents ages 11 years and above. It takes approximately 5–10 minutes to complete. In 2006, a parent-report version was created to allow for assessment of bipolar symptoms in children or adolescents from a caregiver perspective, with the research looking at youths as young as 5 years old. The MDQ has become one of the most widely studied and used questionnaires for bipolar disorder, and it has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Watson and Clark (1991) proposed the Tripartite Model of Anxiety and Depression to help explain the comorbidity between anxious and depressive symptoms and disorders. This model divides the symptoms of anxiety and depression into three groups: negative affect, positive affect and physiological hyperarousal. These three sets of symptoms help explain common and distinct aspects of depression and anxiety.
Distress tolerance is an emerging construct in psychology that has been conceptualized in several different ways. Broadly, however, it refers to an individuals' "perceived capacity to withstand negative emotional and/or other aversive states, and the behavioral act of withstanding distressing internal states elicited by some type of stressor." Some definitions of distress tolerance have also specified that the endurance of these negative events occur in contexts in which methods to escape the distressor exist.
Automatic negative thoughts (ANT) are thoughts that are negative and random in nature in reference to one’s self.
References
- ↑ Sundberg, Norman (2001). Clinical Psychology: Evolving Theory, Practice, and Research. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-087119-2.
- 1 2 3 Weems, C. F., Berman, S. L., Silverman, W. K., & Saavedra, L. M. (2001). "Cognitive errors in youth with anxiety disorders: The linkages between negative cognitive errors and anxious symptoms". Cognitive Therapy and Research, 25(5), 559-575.
- ↑ Maric, M., Heyne, D. A., van Widenfelt, B., M., & Westenberg, P. M. (2011). "Distorted cognitive processing in youth: The structure of negative cognitive errors and their associations with anxiety". Cognitive Therapy and Research, 35(1), 11-20.
- ↑ Leitenberg, H., Yost, L. W., & Carroll-Wilson, M. (1986). "Negative cognitive errors in children: Questionnaire development, normative data, and comparisons between children with and without self-reported symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, and evaluation anxiety". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , 54, 528–536.
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