PSYA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Sleep Disorder, Dsm-5
PSYA02H3 verified notes
28/39View all
PSYA02 Lecture 25: Clinical Psychology Part Two
− DSM-5: lists 22 categories that include all we know about mental illness today
o 4) Risk factors and Etiology
▪ Etiology: what exactly causes a disorder
• Rare for DSM to have exact cause of disorder
• DSM tends to list risk factors
▪ Risk factors: things that correlate with others getting the specific disorder
• Biological, genetic, and environmental factors all considered
▪ Hard to know exact causes of the disorders because we cannot
experiment on humans with them
o 5) Comorbidities: other disorders that commonly co-occur with the disorder
▪ Treatment is not part of DSM, only diagnosis
− Anxiety disorders: category or disorders involving maladaptive fear or nervousness
o Fear: adaptive response to threats
▪ Protects us from dangerous environmental elements
o Anxiety: onset if fear responses when there isnt a threat present at the moment
▪ Often arises from perception that fear will arise in the future
▪ Anxiety that interferes with normal functions is maladaptive
• Decreases our fitness
• Very common: 70% of Canadians experience maladaptive anxiety
o 4 major anxiety disorders: GAD, Phobic Disorder, Panic Disorder, OCD
− 1) Generalized Anxiety Disorder: anxiety disorder where worries are not focused on
any specific threat
o The anxiety always seems to settle on something even when no stressor is
present
▪ i) Diagnostic Criteria: all have to be met to make diagnosis for GAD
• Excessive anxiety and worry for more days than not for at least 6
months about multiple stressors
• Person finds it hard to control worry
• Person must have 3 of the following symptoms
o Restlessness, Fatigue, Irritability, Muscle tension, Sleep
disturbance, Concentration difficulties
• The three universal diagnostic criteria
▪ ii) Onset: rarely before adolescence, median age is 30
• Symptoms usually develop before this age
• Level of anxiety among people remains constant in population
o Only content of the worry changes
