PSYCO105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Twin
1 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Dimensions
❏Comorbidity at a glance → Different diseases overlap.
❏Special notes for contextual factors and disabilities
Criticisms of DSM-5
❏Diagnosis of mental disorders can be subjective
❏Diagnosis of mental disorders is based on symptoms in DSM-5
❏Diagnosis of mental disorders is not scientific enough.
❏Inclusion of a disorder in the manual can have significant social consequences.
❏Diagnostic labels have potential of being stigmatized individuals.
❏Pharmaceutical industry has had too much influence on the psychiatrists who work on the DSMs.
❏DSM makes it too easy to over-diagnose normal people.
Psychological Disorders
1. Anxiety → usually not related to some strong real threat.
a. Frequency & Intensity of responses are out of proportion to situations.
b. Subcategories
i. Phobic Disorders
1. Strong, irrational fears of objects or situations → Most develop during
childhood, adolescence, young adulthood.
2. Seldom go away on their own → can intensity over time.
3. Common Examples; Agoraphobic (fear of open or public places), social
phobias (fear of social evaluative situations), or Specific phobias (fear of
objects such as animals or situations).
ii. Generalized Anxiety Disorder → Chronic state of diffusion, free-floating anxiety,
not tied to specific situation conditions → Feeling of something is going to
happen don’t know what.
iii. Panic Disorder → Occur suddenly, unpredictably, intense. May occur with or
without agoraphobia.
1. There may be a correlation between panic and generalized?
iv. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
1. Obsession → cognitive component with repetitive and unwelcome
thoughts.
2. Compulsion is a behavioural component with repetitive behavioural
responses.
c. Causes of Anxiety Disorders
i. Biological Factors → Genetic (identical twins more similar than fraternal twins)
ii. GABA → Reduces neural activity in key areas → Low levels may cause highly
reactive nervous systems
iii. Gender Differences → Females exhibit more anxiety disorders than males →
Differences emerge as early as seven years old.
1. Positive explanations → Less power and personal control from women.
d. Psychological Factors - Causes
i. Cognitive explanations → Maladaptive thoughts and beliefs → Things appraise
“catastrophically”
e. Panic Attacks → Depict a process in which normal manifestations of anxiety are
appraised catastrophically, ultimately resulting in a full-blown panic attack.
f. Learning Explanations → Classical conditioning → Associating an object or situation with
pain and trauma → Telling someone that object is bad, they develop a fear of it = anxiety.
2. Eating Disorders
