Phobias
What is claustrophobia?
Abnormal fear of being in enclosed spaces. A person may avoid tight spaces and often engage in “safety seeking behavior” like opening windows or sitting near an exit to try to make situations more tolerable.
What are 3 medications used to treat anxiety?
Antidepressants: Prozach (fluxoetine), sertraline (Zoloft), escitalopram (Lexapro), paroxetine (Paxil), citalopram (Celexa), buproprion (Wellbutrin), venlafaxine (Effexor), imipramine (Tofranil), phenelzine (Nardil), tranylcypromine (Parnate),
Benzodiazepines: Clonazepam (Klonopic), Lorazepam (Ativan), Alprazolam (Xanax), Buspirone (Buspar),
Hypnotic medications to induce sleep: Restoril, Dalmane, Ambien, Benadryl
Beta-Blockers: propronolol (Inderal)
What type of anxiety often lasts for about 10 minutes and includes difficulty breathing, chest pain, intense feeling of terror, dizziness, sweating, and a fear that death is imminent?
Panic Attack:
Once a person experiences a panic attack, a key symptom required to be diagnosed with panic disorder is a persistent fear of having future panic attacks.
It may cause a person to avoid places and situations where the attack occurred or where they believe an attack may occur.
Reflection Question: What does anxiety feel like for you and is there a specific situation or event that makes you experience symptoms of anxiety?
Answers will vary.
What is the definition of a coping skill?
Decrease severity of symptoms
Decrease distress caused by symptoms
Increase ability to accomplish things
What is the difference between fear and a phobia?
Fear: protects from danger or from a dangerous situation
Phobias: Has little do to with danger - an intense, irrational fear when faced with a certain situation, activity, or object. One may know anxiety and fear is not warranted.
What are 3 side effects that can occur from medication used to treat anxiety?
What type of anxiety is characterized by at least six months of persistent excessive unfocused anxiety and worry?
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is general, chronic anxiety about everyday life events with no specific reasons for worry.
A person with this tends to always expect a disaster and cannot stop worrying about day to day things like health, money, work. The worry is often unrealistic and can interfere with day to day functioning.
Symptoms include: feeling ‘edgy”, irritability, headaches, sweating, difficulty concentrating, nausea, the need to go to the bathroom frequently, troubles falling or staying asleep, tiredness.
What is the term for one who cannot throw away useless items, such as old newspapers, junk mail, even broken appliances to the point that sometimes entire rooms are filled with saved items?
Hoarding
Reflection question: Support systems are an important way to cope with your symptoms. Who is someone you could talk to when you are feeling anxious?
Answers will vary
What is Agoraphobia?
Fear of public places where escape may be difficult or embarrassing.
Example: being trapped in a public place like a line at the bank.
What is desensitization therapy?
A process of gradually exposing someone with a phobia or OCD to circumstances that resemble what they fear. Over time, the fear lessens as the person builds confidence. This is often accompanied by talk therapy to help the person change how they think and develop new ways to respond to the situations that trigger the emotions associated with a phobia. This treatment generally helps 90% of people who follow through.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is one type of anxiety disorder. What is the difference between obsessions and compulsions?
Obsessions: recurrent, unwanted thoughts.
Compulsions: repetitive behaviors such as handwashing, counting, or cleaning that are often performed to prevent or stop obsessive thoughts. They often only provide temporary relief.
For OCD to be diagnosed, the obsessions and compulsions must make up at least one hour every day and interfere with normal routines.
Panic attacks can easily be misdiagnosed as what physical illness due to their similar symptoms?
Heart Attack
During a heart attack, the chest pain is focused in the center of the chest and may radiate to the left arm, neck, or back and lasts longer than 5-10 minutes. People experiencing a heart attack do not hyperventilate and vomiting is common. If there is tingling it is usually confined to the left arm.
During a panic attack, the chest pain is localized over the heart and is describes as a sharp pain that usually intensifies with breathing in and out. It may cause nausea but vomiting is rare. Hyperventilation almost always occurs. The entire body tingles.
What are three different relaxation techniques you could use to cope with anxiety?
Examples: deep breathing, meditation, listen to music, etc.
What is Zoophobia?
Fear of animals: the most common type of specific phobia. Often develop in childhood and sometimes go away as a child ages but can persist into adulthood.
Examples of phobias of specific animals:
Arachnophobia: fear of spiders
Ophidiophobia; fear of snakes
Apiphobia: fear of bees.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
In this treatment, people learn how to recognize and change thought patterns and behaviors that lead to troublesome feelings. It also aims to ID possible triggers for panic attacks and it helps limit distorted thinking by looking at the worries more realistically.
What type of anxiety includes an intense, chronic fear of being judged by others or being embarrassed or humiliated?
Social Anxiety Disorder
A person with this disorder is afraid he or she will make mistakes and be embarrassed or humiliated in front of others.
People with social anxiety disorder suffer from distorted thinking, including false beliefs about social situations and the negative opinions of others.
Which personality characteristic increases the likelihood of having test anxiety?
Perfectionism because they find it hard to accept mistakes they make or get anything short of a perfect score
Test anxiety occurs when a person experiences distress before, during, or after a test or other assessment to such an extent that this anxiety causes poor performance or interferes with normal learning.
What are two negative ways people use to cope with their symptoms and what are two alternative options?
Negatives: use alcohol or drugs, avoiding the situation or person entirely/isolating self, becoming angry/irritable, use food
Positives: talk to someone, deep breaths, relaxation techniques, etc.
What is Brontophobia?
Fear of Thunder: Even though a person may realize thunder will not hurt them, they may refuse to go outside during a thunderstorm or may hide indoors in a closet or crouch behind a couch until the storm is over.
What group of drugs are usually used to treat heart conditions and high blood pressure, but can be used to control some of the physical symptoms of anxiety?
Beta-Blockers such as propranolol (Inderal). These can be used for a short period of time to help keep physical symptoms such as trembling and sweating at bay. For example: when giving a speech or attending an important meeting.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after experiencing a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened, such as personal assaults, natural disasters, accidents. How long do the symptoms need to occur to be classified as PTSD?
Greater than one month.
If symptoms last less than a month then it is known as Acute Stress Disorder.
Symptoms include experiencing the event through recurrent dreams or recollections, avoiding activities associated with the trauma, a numbness or loss of interest/detachment, and hypersensitivity, including being unable to sleep, anxious feelings, irritability, and overactive startle response.
One in how many Americans adults are affected with anxiety disorders every year?
1 in 5
Mental Health Statistics 2021 - Mental Health Foundation
What are three specific community resources one could you to help deal with symptoms?
Answers will vary: e.g. support groups (emotions anonymous, NAMI, DBSA), go for a walk around community lakes/areas, YMCA, creative expression groups, meetup, etc.