Summary - Clinical Psychology: Anxiety and Stress (FSWP2-062-A)

Problem 1 Stress

Stress
 Transaction leads a person to perceive discrepancy between
demands of situation and resources
 3 Approaches
o Stimulus
 Stressors: physical/psychological challenging
events/situations
o Response
 Focus is on people’s reactions
 Strain: psychological/physiological response to stressor
o Process
 Relationship between person and environment
 Transactions: continuous interaction and adjustment
with person and environment
 Chronic stress: last a long time or occur often, more stress if stressor
frequent, intense, and high in duration
 Effect of Stress
o Stress -> cognition
 Impaired memory
 Stress -> worries/distractions -> low performance
 Executive function: manages stress but also impaired
o Stress -> emotion
 Emotional states can identify stress
 Stress -> fear/phobia

Transactional Model of Stress (Cognitive)
 Cognitive appraisal
o Mental process evaluation demand and resources
 Primary appraisal
o Assessment of meaning of situation for wellbeing
o 3 judgements: irrelevant, good, stressful
 Stressful: harm-loss, threat, challenge
o Appraisal influence stress when vicarious too
 Secondary appraisal
o Assessment of resources available
o Stress conditions depend on outcome of appraisal
 Factors to stressful appraisal
o High self-esteem, less stress
o More important goal, more stress
o Perfectionism, more stress
o Strong, immediate demand, more stress

General Adaptation Syndrome (Seyle)
 Process body goes through during stress
 Alarm Reaction (stage 1)

, o Function to mobilize body’s resource
o Fast-acting arousal, sympathetic NS -> activates adrenal gland
-> releases epinephrine and norepinephrine
o HPA axis -> hypothalamus -> pituitary gland -> secrete ACTH
-> adrenal gland to release cortisol
 Stage of Resistance (stage 2)
o HPA activation predominates
o Ability to resist new stressor impaired
o Disease of adaption
 Stage of Exhaustion (stage 3)
o Prolonged arousal -> long term stress -> weakens immune
system
 Allostatic Load
o Effects of body having to adapt repeatedly to stressors that
accumulate over time

Sources of Stress
 Gender/social cultural differences
o Women
 More stress -> more experienced + more willing to
admit
 Tend and befriend
o Men
 More reactivity, more time to return to baseline
o Minority group
 Lower income (education)
 Sources within people
o Illness -> age-dependent
o Conflict -> depends on stakes
o Motives -> rejection isolation
 Familial sources
o Addition to family, marital strain/divorce, illness, death
 Community sources
o Job
 Workload, evaluation, responsibility
 Physical environment
 Perceived control
o Environment
 Healthcare, social relationships
Measuring Stress
 Types of Stress
o Eustress: good stress -> heightens performance
o Distress: bad stress
 Polygraph
o Blood pressure, heart rate, respiration
 Biochemical analyses of blood, urine, saliva
 Life events
o SRRS (social readjustment rating scale)

,  Wide range, easy, vague
 Daily hassles
o Hassle scales: annoyance
o Uplift scales: nicer things

Interaction (emotion and cognition)
 Fear conditioning (pavlovian conditioning)
o CS: conditioned stimulus
o US: unconditioned stimulus
o UR: unconditioned response
o Conditioned repones
 Acquisition: UR -> CR
 Extinction: unpairing CR with CS

Pathways
 Low road
o Faster
o Thalamus -> amygdala
o No conscious control
 High road
o Slower
o Thalamus -> sensory cortex -> amygdala
o Carefully analyzed

Role of Amygdala/Hippocampus
 Amygdala
o Response to stimuli that are implicitly aversive (fearful)
 Learning through behavioral response
 Emotionally aversive
 Hippocampus
o Explicit memory of stimulus being aversive (recall)
o Knowledge obtained about negativity but no emotion


Biopsychological Aspects
 Physiological reaction
o Increased heart rate, sympathetic NS & endocrine system
 Reactivity
o Physiological aspect of the response to a stressor/strain
o Measured through comparison against baseline level of
arousal
o Influenced by genetic and chronic stress
 Fight-or-Flight response
o Reaction preparing organism to attack or flee the danger
 Causes sympathetic NS to stimulate organs directly,
adrenal gland -> epinephrine
 Harmful if prolonged
 Stress Response