Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety - frequent, persistent worry and apprehension about a perceived threat in the environment.
Phobia - extreme, irrational fear towards a stimulus and is disproportionate to the actual danger
Generalised Anxiety Disorder - a long-term condition in which feelings of anxiety may be generalised over multiple situations and things (money, health, work, etc.) rather than a specific stimulus (phobia).
Symptoms
Muscle tension
Restlessness
Feeling on 'edge'
Difficulty concentrating (due to being preoccupied with their worry)
Tiredness and irritation (due to sleep disturbance)
Panic attacks can last minutes or hours
Fear of dying or losing control
Shortness of breath or coking
Sweating
Feeling dizzy or light headed
Accelerated heart rate
Nausea
Types of phobias
Case study (Kimya aged 39)
has a fear of birds
Can't look at photographs of birds and the thought of touching them makes her sick
Finds the sound of flapping wings upsetting
Avoids places with birds (beaches, town centres, etc.) which limits her social life
Agoraphobia - fear of public places
Haemophobia - irrational fear of blood or needles, injections, medical procedures, etc.
Animal phobias - fear of dogs, insects, birds, spiders, etc.
Koumpounophobia - fear of buttons
They feel distressed and panic attacks when faced with them
They experience an increase in heart rate and a drop in blood pressure which can lead to fainting
They can't touch or look at them
Standing in a line or crowd
Being in open places
Using public transport
Being outside of the house by oneself
Being in enclosed spaces
They avoid such situations or experience distress while enduring them. It can cause impairment to social life.
BIPI (Blood Injection Phobia Inventory)
Measures haemophobia
Self-report with 18 situations involving blood and injections to find cognitive, physiological and behavioural responses
Example situation - when I see someone injured bleeding on the road
Example response
Cognitive - I think I'm going to faint
Physiological - my heartbeat speeds up
Behavioural - I escape from the situation immediately
Participants must rate on a scale of 0-3, the frequency of each symptom (0 - never, 1 - sometimes, 2 - almost always, 3 - always)
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7)
Used as a screening test by general practitioners to enable further referral to a psychiatrist
Has 7 questions which measure the severity of anxiety
Example question - Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen
Participants must score between 0 - 3 to measure frequency of symptoms (0 - not at all, 1 - several days, 2 - more than half the days, 3 - nearly every day)
Evaluation
Strengths
High concurrent validity with other measures so they are valid and reliable self-reports
Weaknesses
Response bias - inaccurate responses can distort results, eg: if a person has a bad day (cut their finger in the morning)
Issues and Debates
Reductionist - they only rely on a single quantitative measurement for phobias which is complex. No qualitative data of what it's like to have a phobia
Use of quantitative data - objective - statistical analysis
No use of qualitative data - no rich data
Cultural bias - Cross cultural differences influence BIPI and GAD-7 results. Cultures that promote well-being and give reassurance to those around will have low rates of agoraphobia