Anxiety and Pain

Anxiety and Pain

  • Submitted By: subtlecse
  • Date Submitted: 08/27/2010 7:16 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 2266
  • Page: 10
  • Views: 403

Anxiety And Pain
How Have Psychological Theories Elucidated the Nature of Anxiety: With Particular Reference to Panic Disorder

Everybody has had experience with anxiety. Indeed anxiety responses have been found in all species right down to the sea slug (Rapee, et al 1998). The concept of anxiety was for a long time bound up with the work of Sigmund Freud where it was more commonly known as neurosis. Freud’s concept of neuroses consisted of a number of conditions characterised by irrational and disproportionate fear. Through time it became apparent that the term was a) becoming to wide a term to be of any use in explanation and b) too intimately connected to psychoanalytic theory, of which many of its basic theoretical assumptions were being increasingly called into question. As successive versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) were created the term neurosis was eventually superseded by Anxiety disorder.The current version of the Manual (DSM-IV) recognises six specific categories of anxiety: phobias, panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and acute stress disorder. Obviously in an essay such as this it would be impossible to give an adequate account of psychological theories regarding all of these distinct anxiety categories. Instead this essay will focus in on one important diagnostic category, that of Panic Disorder (PD). PD is chosen as it is has such extremely debilitating effects on the patient and has also been shown to incur a large proportion of health care costs relative to other anxiety disorders (Rees, Richards, & Smith, 1998) of which more is said below. This being the case there has been much recent research conducted into elucidating the nature of the condition and this offers a good opportunity to explore the way psychological research can help us to come to an understanding of such conditions in general.The Greek God Pan used to delight in terrifying lone...

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