This article discusses generalized anxiety disorder in terms of its defining characteristics, its relationship to other psychiatric disorders, its psychobiology, and its treatment. Although generalized anxiety disorder is frequently encountered in general practice, it has been less systematically investigated than the more dramatic forms of anxiety disorders such as panic disorder and phobias. ...

In vivo exposure therapy for phobias is uniquely suited for controlled studies of endocrine and physiologic responses during psychologic stress. In this study, exposure therapy induced significant increases in subjective anxiety, pulse, blood pressure, plasma norepinephrine, epinephrine, insulin, cortisol, and growth hormone, but did not change plasma glucagon or pancreatic polypeptide. Althoug...

The level of the phobia condition and his progress is done by the evaluation that the doctor does of the patient, without having a certain control of the variables of measurement that show an indication of the medical evolution. The possibility of discovering some variables that might be measured and of being able to determine the evolution of the patient and the level of the illness, is an ins...

We treated two medical phobic subjects with eye movement desensitization (EMD). Using detailed images of fear-related events, the treatment design conformed to an additive, within-series phase change to examine enduring effects. Results indicated that both subjects' verbal reports of fear decreased substantially using the EMD procedure. There were no consistent changes in heart rate. Similarly,...

There is a growing body of research indicating the multiple ways that affective dysregulation (e.g., anxiety disorders, specific phobias, panic disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)) may lead to significant impairments in normal life functioning. Anxiety and fear are concentrated emotional experiences that serve critical functions in organizing necessary survival responses (Fendt &...

One-session treatment (OST), a variant of cognitive-behavioral therapy, combines graduated in vivo exposure, participant modeling, reinforcement, psychoeducation, cognitive challenges, and skills training in an intensive treatment model. Treatment is maximized to one 3-hour session. In this paper, we review the application of OST for specific phobia in youth and highlight practical matters rela...

An individual's personality reflects habits and dispositions that have developed from experience. Adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, anxieties, and phobias are largely products of learning. Neurotic or psychotic symptoms can be the consequences of specific experiences or repeated patterns of experience. Psychotherapy is a process by which new behaviors are acquired through the accumula...

INTRODUCTION Common anxiety disorders include panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and social phobias. The brain circuitry associated with anxiety remains to be fully elucidated. Investigators have used a number of imaging modalities including positron emission tomography for imaging the brain during induced anxiety states. We report here the first fMR1...

This paper presents a study about the use of virtual reality techniques Social Anxiety Disorder therapy. The final idea of this technique is to treat social phobic people only by short time exposition in a dedicated stress environment parameterized in real-time. The technique is applied to the problematic of speaking in public with a symbolic representation of an audience. Nevertheless, the sam...

The Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale-Revised (DPSS-R [Pers. Indiv. Differ. 41 (2006) 1241-1252]) is a new assessment tool thought to assess two distinguishable factors contributing to disgust reactions, Disgust Propensity and Disgust Sensitivity. Extant data though indicate the presence of four unreliable DPSS-R items. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a reduced-...