PHOBIAS & ANXIETY DISORDERS

STATISTICS ON ANXIETIES

•5-10% of the population have anxiety at any one time, but many people do not seek help.

•More women than men are affected.

• often start in the 20s

ANXIETIES DEFINEDAnxiety is a normal human feeling. We all

experience it when faced with situations we find threatening or difficult.

Four types of anxiety disorders are:

1. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (most common)

2. panic attacks

3. post traumatic stress disorder

4. phobias

SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETIESIn the mind: Feeling worried all the time, feeling tired and/or

irritable, unable to concentrate and sleeping poorly.

In the body: Irregular heartbeats (palpitations), sweating, muscle tension and pains, breathing heavily, dizziness,

faintness, indigestion and/or diarrhea.

symptoms are easily mistaken by anxious people for evidence of serious physical illness -- worrying about this can make the

symptoms even worse.

Sudden surges of anxiety – panic -- usually lead to the person having to quickly get out of whatever situation they happen to

be in.

CAUSES OF ANXIETY Some of us are born with a tendency to be anxious (genetic)

people who are not naturally anxious can become anxious if they are put under enough pressure.

street drugs -- amphetamines, LSD or Ecstasy and even substances such as caffeine

Major life changes such as pregnancy or job loss

Sometimes we know what is causing our anxiety. When the problem disappears, so does the anxiety. Some circumstances are so upsetting and threatening that the anxiety they cause can go on long after the event.

(Post-traumatic stress disorder)

Sometimes it may not be clear at all why a particular person feels anxious, because it is due to a mixture of their personality, the things that have happened to them, or life-changes.

TREATING ANXIETIESTalking about the problem

Self Help Groups

Learning to relax

Psychotherapy

Many different types of medication are used, from tranquilizers and antidepressants as well as Beta blockers used to treat high blood

pressure. In low doses, they control the physical shaking of anxiety and can be taken shortly before meeting people or before speaking in

public.

Historically: Many people were institutionalized because their problems were not understood or accepted by society. Meditation also

has been used for years for anxiety related conditions.

Contemporary: computerized and noncomputerized cognitive behavioral therapy, progressive relaxation, play therapy for children.

Types of Anxiety Meds• Benzodiazepines are prescription sedatives that

can relieve anxiety within 30 to 90 minutes but they can also become addictive. The most commonly prescribed benzodiazepines are – chlordiazepoxide (Librium)– alprazolam (Xanax)– diazepam (Valium)– lorazepam (Ativan) and – clonazepam (Klonopin).

PHOBIAS DEFINED

• An unreasonable fear that can cause avoidance and panic.

• Eg. extreme fear of spiders is called arachnophobia, and fear of being outside is known as agoraphobia.

• An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that roughly 15% of Americans suffer from phobias.

There are 3 classes of phobias:

1. Agoraphobia -- an intense fear of being in a situation from which immediate escape is not possible

2. social phobia -- when the fear is extremely intrusive and can disrupt normal life, interfering with work or social relationships in varying degrees of severity

3. specific phobia -- there are four categories of specific phobias: 1. situational phobia, 2. fear of natural environment, 3. animal phobia, and 4. blood-injection-injury phobia.

Each and every one of "the phobias" is different.  The only common

denominator is that "phobias" all cause anxiety.

10

CAUSES OF PHOBIAS

•High anxiety state paired with an object.

•levels of general anxiety becoming so high that panic is easily triggered whenever stress levels are raised even slightly.

•Another possible cause of phobias is that we often associate danger to things and situations that we cannot prevent or control, such as lightning strikes during a storm, or the attack of a dangerous animal.

•Traumatic events in our childhood or past can also cause a phobia to develop. Ie: seeing someone die, being raped, being rejected or humiliated.

Symptoms of phobias• Automatic and uncontrollable

reactions including intense symptoms of anxiety – panic, dread, horror.

• Rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling

• an overwhelming desire to get out/away

• Recognition that the fear goes beyond normal boundaries and the actual threat of danger.

• Extreme measures taken to avoid the feared object or situation

TREATING PHOBIAS

Treatments for phobias are generally the same as for anxieties except for therapies that offer ‘facing your fears’. (behavioral therapy called

exposure treatment) This could include having to see or touch or hold spiders, bugs, feathers etc. It could also include trips to crowded areas or on airplanes. The patient learns in a gradual way to control the physical

reactions of fear.

A classical conditioning technique called counter-conditioning is when a person is trained to substitute a relaxation response for the fear response in the presence of the phobic stimulus.  This counter-conditioning is most

often used in a systematic way to very gradually introduce the feared stimulus in a step-by-step fashion known as systematic desensitization.

Other treatments could be modelling (when you watch others behave in a relaxed manner around the object of your fear), hypnosis and medicines

used to control the the panic and anxiety caused by your phobia.

THE COMPUTER ERAOF THERAPY

Beating the Blues

Beating the Blues is a computerized cognitive behavioral therapy (CCBT) program for depression and anxiety. It has been shown to be cost effective and time efficient.

The program was developed and evaluated by Ultrasis in collaboration with a research team from the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London.

Beating the Blues™ is an 8-session, self help treatment designed for use by patients with no previous computer experience. During the 8-session program users identify specific problems and realistic treatment goals. They work through cognitive modules which focus on the identification and challenge of automatic thoughts, thinking errors, distractions, core beliefs and attributional styles. Interwoven with these cognitive elements are problem directed behavioral components where patients can work on any two of activity scheduling, problem solving, graded exposure, task breakdown or sleep management according to their specific problems. The final module looks at action planning and relapse prevention.

(The above was taken from: http://www.ultrasis.com/products/product.jsp?product_id=1)