Anxiety, Mood, Somatoform Disorders

PSY 410
December 12, 2011
R. Keith Franklin LPC.S

Anxiety, Mood, Somatoform Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a reference book compiled by different experts to include psychiatrist, psychologists, and nurses. The DSM was created to provide a helpful guide to clinical practices and to serve as an educational tool for teaching psychopathology. The DSM classifies mental disorders in five areas called Axis’s. The areas of the DSM that will be discussed in more detail are anxiety, mood disorders, and dissociative or somatoform disorders. It will be interesting to compare the biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components of each disorder.
Anxiety
Anxiety is usually defined as an unpleasant emotion with a sense of danger or believing that something bad will happen. Generalized anxiety disorder or GAD is commonly diagnosed. Females are diagnosed two times more frequently than men with GAD. The development of GAD can occur as a child. A child can worry about fitting in at school, sporting events, the strive for approval, and perfection. Adolescents with GAD could feel the stress associated with punctuality, school performance, and catastrophic events (Staff, nd). Panic disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and phobias are included in this section of the DSM. In a panic attack, the victim is overwhelmed with a sense of the need to escape. A phobia is explained as an exaggerated sense of fear to an object or place such as cynophobia or fear of dogs. OCD is characterized by repetition of anxiety that produces compulsive rituals to protect the person from anxiety (Hansell, 2008). There have been studies that link genetics and hormonal differences in men and women making women more vulnerable to GAD. People living in poor urban environments are also more likely to