...A Theoretical Definition of Anxiety Cindy Lucas The University of Texas at Arlington College of Nursing In partial fulfillment of the requirements of N5327 Exploring Science and Theories in Nursing Patricia Thomas, PhD, RN, NNP-BC September 10, 2014 A Theoretical Definition of Anxiety In the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) parents of premature and critically ill infants experience a great deal of emotion during the time their infant is in the NICU. Parents are thrust into the world of immaturity of bodily systems, disturbing alarm sounds, and unfamiliar words; like apnea and bradycardia. Anxious parents in the NICU are often described by nurses and the medical team as difficult or annoying because in our roles in the NICU we forget that this is a crisis for these parents and it is difficult for them to cope with the situation. Parents in the NICU often talk to the nurse about their feelings of anxiety in regards to the health of their infant and the NICU environment in general. Thousands of infants are born premature or critically ill on an annual basis which presents a challenge in the NICU to facilitate the bonding and attachment of parent and infant which can often cause parents a great deal of anxiety. Rationale for Selecting Concept Anxiety in the parents of a premature infant is evident every day in the NICU. I chose to define this concept to hopefully reveal interventions and therapies to help the parents of the infants that I care for cope with...
Words: 457 - Pages: 2
...Have you ever felt nervous before taking a exam, or before a interview? Did you stressed out because you needed to make a important decision, and you started to sweat and your hands started to shake? You were feeling anxious, you just didn’t know it. In that case you are getting motivated before an act but there are some people that doesn’t get motivated by anxiety. You are facing anxiety everyday, but there are some other types of anxiety that are not so harmless and their causes are different. People are different so are their feelings and disorders. Anxiety is similar to fear, the difference is that fear is a response to a real threat, and anxiety is not. It is a feeling of nervousness and worry, overreaction to something that doesn’t even...
Words: 294 - Pages: 2
...Everyone has anxiety in there life. There is no way not to get anxious. Anxiety shows when you have a big test coming up or even facing a new problem. Having anxiety can stop you from moving forward in life. Anxiety can show up at any time with no warning. Everyone has different kinds of anxiety but when the anxiety shows you can sweat, cry, or even have chest pains. Some people get anxiety for having to talk in front of people. They get overwhelmed and self conscious and sometimes freeze in the moment. Others have fears of flying or heights. There's nothing you can do to help this fear or make it better other than to face it. People who are afraid of doing these tasks are just scared. People with anxiety about doing these tasks are...
Words: 364 - Pages: 2
...Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms Mariel-Pauleane Gomez PSYC 393-2 September 29, 2015 My definition of anxiety is when you are experiencing an overwhelming amount of stress, but do not know the cause of it, to the point where it is interfering with your everyday activities. Freud’s understanding of anxiety is the feeling of fear without an obvious cause. My definition and Freud’s understanding of anxiety are similar to one another. Our definitions of anxiety both mention how when a person is experiencing anxiety, they not know exactly why they are experiencing it. Freud proposed that there are three types of anxiety: reality, neurotic, and moral anxiety. For myself, I think that there is only one type of anxiety, but there are different levels of it. I believe that it depends on how long the person copes or overcomes their anxiety. The longer it takes for a person to overcome anxiety, the more serious their anxiety is. When a person is experiencing anxiety, I believe that they are feeling helpless, like an infant or baby. Freud mentions that when one is experiencing anxiety, regardless of age, they are also feeling helpless. Freudian defense mechanisms ranked in order of primitive to more advanced: denial, repression, projection, reaction formation, regression, displacement, rationalization, and finally sublimation. I ranked denial as the most primitive defense mechanisms because I consider this the most generic defense mechanism because it underlies many of the other...
Words: 929 - Pages: 4
...Psychological Disorders Psychological disorders can be very serious, and in most cases are very serious. As many as 450 million people suffer around the world from mental illnesses, including various anxiety disorders, mood disorders, psychotic disorders and more. Psychological disorders can be mentally debilitating and even lead to self-harm and suicide. These disorders and illnesses are nothing to joke about and should be taken seriously. Psychologists point that while someone may have a disorders, they shouldn't be looked at as they're disorder. For instance a child with autism should not be referred to as an "autistic person". Instead we should say "people with autism" because there is so much more to people than their disorder. We are all still humans, regardless of the disorder or illness that some of us may have. Psychological disorders may not always be noticeable to friends, family and/or their surroundings as we may not be able to see their disability. Psychological disorders are often referred to as invisible disabilities, because even though someone may have one, they're often able to hide it from you. I think the majority of people that choose to hide their mental illnesses is due to the fact they don't want to be looked at as "crazy". I, myself, have an anxiety and mood disorder and I can say I choose to hide this from most people because I don't want to be looked at as "a crazy person" or mentally unstable, even though that may very well be the case. I think the...
Words: 2870 - Pages: 12
...and found out how common this very personal, ground-shattering experience actually was. I was diagnosed with Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia. I. Introduction Throughout history, anxiety and fear have been recognized as an inherent part of man’s existence. However, in antiquity, as well as late in the Middle Ages, anxiety phenomena were seldom described in a medical context, despite the fact that Hippocrates related obvious cases of phobic avoidance in a book dated around 400 BC (Hippocrates, translated in 1780). Hippocrates described the case of a man who ‘could not go near a precipice or over a bridge, or beside even the shallowest ditch; and yet he could walk in the ditch himself’. It was only in the 19th century that panic emerged as a fundamental problem, and since then, anxiety symptoms in the context of phobic avoidance have become firmly embedded in a medical context. (Den Boer, J.A., S3) II. Defining Panic There have been some revisions to what constitutes panic attacks and panic disorder in recent years. Panic attacks were first defined in 1980 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, as “the sudden onset of intense apprehension, fear, or terror, often associated with impending doom”. (Barlow, David H., p. 553) This definition was revised in 1987 to include a minimum of 4 out of 13 panic symptoms. (listed below) And “sudden onset” was now defined as reaching peak intensity within 10 minutes....
Words: 2442 - Pages: 10
...comparative study of uncertainty, optimism and anxiety in patients receiving their first implantable defibrillator for primary or secondary prevention of sudden cardiac death. Is a research project where the problem being addressed is, "To determine if patients receiving their first Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) for primary prevention (pp) versus secondary prevention (sp) differed in uncertainty, anxiety, and optimism before, one week, and one month after implant”(Carroll & Arthur,2009). The research purpose of this study is "to determine if patients receiving their first ICD for primary or secondary prevention of sudden cardiac death from ventricular arrhythmias differed in their level of uncertainty, anxiety, and optimism before ICD implant and further explore uncertainty and anxiety both one week and one month past ICD implant”(Carroll & Arthur, 2009). This is done using three different types of surveys to collect data from a two groups of 15 participants, before, at one week and at one month regarding their uncertainty, anxiety and optimism. The research does discover a higher incidence uncertainty score in SP patients versus PP patients after one month. This knowledge about a patient’s uncertainty, anxiety and optimism can direct nurses when implementing nursing interventions. Teaching plans can be developed around this information according to whether a patient is a PP, or a SP, and the difference in anxiety and uncertainty. Knowing how a Research...
Words: 1645 - Pages: 7
...Anxiety, Mood/Affective, Dissociative, and Somatoform Matrix By Mary R. Torczon PSY/410 Dr. Jones July 25th, 2011 Anxiety, Mood/Affective, Dissociative, and Somatoform Matrix A disorder is a disruptive condition or combinations of symptoms that an individual experiences that may debilitate to his or her daily lives. Some disorders are more complex than others such as hypochondriasis, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, mood, dissociative, and somatoform disorders make the ability for normal daily functioning impossible. This paper will analyze the disorders of anxiety, mood/affective, dissociative, and somatoform disorders in reference to the biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components of each disorder category. Anxiety Disorders Anxiety disorders, which are many of the most severe mental disorders, stem from phobias or fears. All people experience some form of generalized anxiety or worry from time to time. Categories of anxiety disorders are general anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic disorder (PTSD). Inappropriate anxiety causes the heart to race, breathing becomes rapid, and muscles tense for no reason (AllPsych, 2004). The symptoms, such as excessive worry and fear, become a disorder when they become part of normal daily life. Cognitively, individuals may fixate on perceived dangers and threats. They may over exaggerate the severity of undesirable situations, and...
Words: 1201 - Pages: 5
...The legal and medical models, definitions, of insanity are the same in the sense that they deem a person liable or non-reliable for committing a crime. However, they can be distinguished by the fact that one model believes you can be insane in a way that does not rend you incapable of seeing reality. The medical model suggests there could be degrees to insanity, that it’s a continuum. A continuum being the continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct. The legal model does not believe you could be insane and still know what you are doing. For the legal system its either/or, you’re either insane or you’re not. Insanity in the medical definition terms is a disease that has diagnosable symptoms and a prognosis. One of the first people to talk about the medical model of insanity is Freud and he said there were too little known about the brain to completely diagnose insanity and split the medical model of the mind into two parts, Neuroses and psychosis. The definition of the first part, Neuroses, was a mild mental illness that is not caused by organic diseases. Neuroses involves symptoms of stress like depression and anxiety, but the person does not...
Words: 881 - Pages: 4
...Chapter II Presentation of Data A. Definition of social anxiety disorder or social phobia was defined by different sources. 1. In 400 BC, Hippocrates described the overly shy person as someone who loves darkness as life and thinks every man observes hi. During the second edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMII), social fears were described as a specific phobia of social situations or an excessive fear of being observed or scrutinized by others and in the third edition, it was described as a fear of performance situations. Lastly, it is described in the fourth edition as a marked and persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or possible scrutiny by others. 2. A social phobia is a fear of being observed by others acting in a way that will be humiliating or embarrassing. It is an irrational and intense fear that one’s behavior in a public situation will be mocked or criticized by others. 3. Social phobia is an irrational fear of being judged, watched or evaluated, or of embarrassing or humiliating themselves. Fear of scrutiny by other leading to avoidance of social situations. B. There are scientific concerns regarding social anxiety disorder. 1. The signs and symptoms of social phobia were subdivided into four, the physical, emotional and behavioral, associated personality traits and the cognitive aspect. a. Blushing, profuse sweating, trembling or shaking...
Words: 2183 - Pages: 9
...advertisement, theories presented within them are applicable to understanding why certain advertisements are successful. While all advertisements are expertly engineered to manipulate an audience into purchasing a product, advertisements which depict and objectify women in order to sell their merchandise present psychological complexity and the incorporation of ideas of psychoanalysts and theorists. Fetishism, in particular the Freudian definition of fetishism, is essential in many advertisements. A common image is that of the product being advertised placed so that it completely obstructs the genitalia of an...
Words: 1403 - Pages: 6
...MaCauly Cacioppo Abnormal Psychology (Psych 430-001) Liberty University Psychology Department Abstract In this paper, you will learn about the various definitions of Premature Ejaculation, the criteria that describes this dis order, as well as the various treatment methods that are involved in over coming it. Men who have this problem are taught various techniques to help manage there ejaculations in a productive way, thereby helping them to have a healthier sex life with their partner. You will also learn about some of the medications that one could take with this problem to help lessen the problem. The chief thing to remember though, is that this is a very manageable problem, one that about 30% of men in the United States will live with, one that they will over come with dedicated effort, a loving partner, and a will to over come it. Premature Ejaculation (PE), also known as rapid ejaculation, premature climax, rapid climax, or early ejaculation, is when a man reaches orgasm and ejaculation at a rapid pace, and with very little sexual stimulation, either before, or quickly after penetration, and before he means to, and as many as 30% of men in the United states experience PE at some point in their life (Comer, 2010). The most common definition of PE is when a man reaches climax within two minutes of penetration, however this has been some what controversial due to a survey by Alfred Kinsey, in which he demonstrated that three...
Words: 2418 - Pages: 10
...Cause of Forgetting: motivated forgetting, repression Definition and explanation: Repression is when the brain blocks the conscious recollection of memories to prevent anxiety-arousal and leads to forgetting. Julius keeps forgetting when he is scheduled to work because he hates his job. This arouses anxiety in him and thus the brain represses the memory to protect him from the anxiety. d. Cause of Forgetting: protractive interference Definition and explanation: Protractive interference happens when prior information learned interferes with the recollection of new information. Faizal keeps mixing her new assistant’s name (Jason Timberlake) with the famous singer, Justin Timberlake, because she knew Justin Timberlake’s name before meeting Jason Timberlake. Thus the previous memory interferes with the new memory. e. Cause of Forgetting: retroactive interference Definition and explanation: Retroactive interference happens when newly learned information interferes with the recollection of formerly learned information. Tanya keeps mixing up the prominent historians with sociologists because she studied sociology after studying history. Thus the newly learned information of sociology is interfering with...
Words: 819 - Pages: 4
...P Post traumatic stress disorder is a term that many people are familiar with. We hear this on the news or read about it the newspaper from time to time. Post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD for short is often included in conversations discussing people who have survived some sort of life threatening danger or trauma. the generalized definition of post traumatic stress disorder is, “an anxiety disorder some people get after seeing or living through a dangerous event.” The purpose of this paper is to give a more in-depth definition of post traumatic stress disorder by examining the definitions that professionals in the psychology and psychiatry field have developed as well as the symptoms, or requirements a person must have in order to truly be diagnosed with PTSD. The purpose of my research is to find the reason that soldiers who have served in wars are often diagnosed with PTSD. There is a vast amount of information and studies on the subject of PTSD, with each professional developing their own definition. The National Institute of Mental Health Defines post traumatic stress disorder as a common anxiety disorder that develops after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. They go on to say that family members and friends of the person involved in the trauma can also experience PTSD. In order to truly be aware of what post traumatic stress syndrome is, it is important to understand what symptoms or factors the person...
Words: 282 - Pages: 2
...Fay Bound (2004) tests the word anxiety and the message conveyed with it in our present day. Vocalizing that the word “anxiety” is being overly used to describe a false disorder and belittle the real disorder. Stating that anxiety was not a word until the 17th century, Bound gives readers the “real” definition to this disorder. Bound also argues that anxiety is not rooted in the mind as previously thought nor can it define the state of someone who is emotionally distressed. Anxiety is not something that should be used loosely and cannot be used to describe abnormal or numerous amount of fears. Bound uses a lot of resources in the journal like various authors, networks and publications of anxiety. One would suppose that Bound would use a...
Words: 308 - Pages: 2
