Assessment of Psychopathology

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Assessment of Psychopathology

Normally both fear and anxiety can be helpful, helping us to avoid

dangerous situations, making us alert and giving us the motivation to

deal with problems. However, if the feelings become too strong or go

for too long, they can stop us from doing the things we want to and

can make our lives miserable. A phobia is a fear of particular

situations or things that are not dangerous and which most people do

not find troublesome.

Most common phobias are found in the following three categories

Specific, Social and Agoraphobia. Specific phobia is characterized by

extreme fear of an object or situation that is not harmful under

general conditions. There are four major subtypes of specific phobias

- animal type, situational type (planes, lifts, and enclosed spaces),

natural environment (heights, storms, water) and

blood-injection-injury type.

Social phobia is an anxiety disorder in which a person has significant

anxiety and discomfort related to a fear of being embarrassed,

humiliated, or scorned by others in social or performance situations.

Even when they manage to confront this fear, persons with social

phobia usually feel very anxious before the event/outing, feel

intensely uncomfortable throughout the event/outing and have lingering

unpleasant feelings after the event/outing. Social phobia frequently

occurs with public speaking, meeting people, dealing with authority

figures, eating in public and using public restrooms.

Agoraphobia is as I said before a fear of public places - it can

result in people being afraid to go out of their homes. This anxiety

disorder involves the fear of experiencing...

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they know at a rational level that danger is minimal, yet they so

truly believe that their fear object or situation will cause them

physical or psychological. Beck and colleagues (1985) also found that

people with phobias are more preoccupied with their fear of fear than

the actual object or situation it self.

Williams et al (1997) examined this concept by subjecting people with

agoraphobia to hierarchy of increasingly scary tasks, supported Beck

et al in that participants statements which were tape recorded were

mainly a preoccupation with their current anxiety rather than their

safety.

However, it may be that their danger thoughts were simply not

expressed out loud. Even in situation where there is a good outcome,

people with phobias tend to view the out come in a negative way. (Walice

and Alden 1997).

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