1. 16.2 Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety: a vague, generalized apprehension or feeling that one is in danger.
-out of proportion to the situation
-most common mental illness: 40 million American annually.
Anxiety Disorders Include:
Generalized anxiety disorder, phobic disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
People with anxiety disorders feel anxiety that is out of proportion to the situation provoking it. People who are deeply anxious seem unable to free themselves of recurring worries and fears. Normal anxiety feeling slightly nervous before speaking in front of the class, hands are trembeling and throat is dry, but runs out of the room crying or faints, that isn’t normal.

2. Panic attacks can include:
Choking sensations, chest pain, dizziness, trembling, and hot flashes.
Why?
-some theorists stress the role of learning in producing anxiety.
-some believe it is partly inherited.
-environmental factors: such as traumatic experiences in childhood.
-uncertainties of modern life.
Phobia: an intense and irrational fear of a particular object or situation.
Learning: If a man feels very anxious on a date, for example, even thought of another date may make him nervous, so learns to avoid dates and never has a chance to unlearn the anxiety.

3. Agoraphobia: fear of open spaces.
Specific phobias: can focus on almost anything including high places (acrophobia), or enclosed spaces (claustrophobia).
Social Phobias: fear that they will embarrass themselves in a public place or social setting.
Agoraphobia: fear of open spaces.
Panic Disorder: an extreme anxiety that manifests itself in the form of panic attacks.
Extreme fear of being in a public place, may stop going to the movies or shopping in large public malls. It may reach a point where they can’t even leave their house.
Mild to extreme. Most people deal with phobias by avoiding the thing that frightens them. Thus the phobias are learned and maintained by the reinforcing efffects of avoidance, which reduces anxiety but not the phobia.

4. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:
-during a panic attack, a victim experiences sudden and unexplainable attacks of intense anxiety, leaving the individual to feel a sense of inevitable doom.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:
Obsessions: a recurring thought or image that seems to be beyond control.
Compulsions: an apparently irresistible urge to repeat an act or engage in ritualistic behavior such as hand washing.
Usaully last for a few minutes but can last for an hour or more. Panic disorders may be inherited, in part. However, the panic attack victim usually experiences the first attack shortly after a stressful event.
A compulsive person may feel compelled to wash his hands 20 or 30 times a day or avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk.
Ray Romano.
Only a problem if it interferes with what a person wants and needs to do.
It can run in families. Although most people with obsessive-compulsive disorder realize that their thoughts and actions are irrational, they feel unable to stop them.

5. Symptoms: involuntary flashbacks or recurring nightmares.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) disorder in which victims of traumatic events experience the original event in the form of dreams or flashbacks.
Common among: veterans, survivors of terrorism, natural disasters, or other catastrophes.
Symptoms: involuntary flashbacks or recurring nightmares.
*Social support may protect a victim of trauma from psychological aftereffects.
-18% of American soldiers who fought in Iraq will develop PTSD.
The event that triggers overwhelms a person’s sense of reality and ability to cope. Can begin immediately after or develop later.
Can be extremely long lasting. Not everyone develops it. Social support
(60 minutes piece)