A Concept Analysis of Anxiety - Essay Example

? A Conceptual Analysis of Anxiety A Conceptual Analysis of Anxiety Anxiety and fear are both parts of emotionssuch as joy, loneliness, madness and shame. They are part of daily lives of people. The exact distinction between anxiety and fear is difficult to identify and depends upon the situation. The objective of the study undertaken is to present various perspectives of the different disciplines regarding the concept of anxiety. The perspectives include medical and non-medical fields. Anxiety is distinguished from fear as anxiety is the reaction to an unexpected, possible harmless scenario. On the other hand, fear pertains is the reaction to a verified danger. Anxiety and fear are related but they are two different kinds of emotions especially when behavioral response is used as a basis. From an evolutionary point of view, possible hazard is detected and behavioral, cognitive and emotional reactions occur to save the human being and escape the possible danger through the functioning of anxiety as a logical and functional effect (Sartori, Landgraf and Singewald, 2011). Some people avoid anxiety and develop phobia towards anxiety. The phobia towards anxiety is known as anxiety sensitivity and it pertains to fear of anxiety symptoms that lead to beliefs about the negative effects of the symptoms in terms of psychological, physiological, and social point-of-view. Anxiety sensitivity leads to panic disorder and other anxiety diseases according to the studies conducted on adults and have increasingly become the reason for the onset of anxiety in the early stages of life like in childhood and adolescence. Studies showed that anxiety sensitivity is identified as an indicator to predict the panic attacks among preteens. It is related to fears, anxiety, panic-like symptoms, and anxiety diseases based on the experiments done on children and adolescents in communities. Anxiety sensitivity has the possibility to be connected to anxiety symptoms above and it is not only a trait since it influences the lives of children and adolescents (Mc Laughlin and Hatzenbuehler, 2009). As the above explanations showed, childhood and adolescence are the main life stages where the onset of anxiety symptoms occurs. Symptoms may involve mild symptoms or the whole anxiety disorders. The reliable clinical validity of assessment in the perspective of research is needed to determine the prevalence and patterns of the onset of panic and anxiety. Deeper understanding of characteristics as solid symptoms for more malignant disorders is needed as it may have some relations to self-limiting patterns of course and outcome. Early detection is an advantage so people can recognize anxiety and make full preparations and preventions or treatment for the young people (Beesdo, Knappe and Pine, 2009). Previous studies showed the effect of unrelated emotions to tasks on a goal-oriented cognitive processing occurring simultaneously is connected to unlike patterns of activation in emotions and perceptions versus cognitive executive brain regions. Although little is known about the use of individual variations in the responses, a present study investigated deeper into the influence of anxiety on the neural responses controlling: …the effect of transient anxiety-inducing task-irrelevant distraction on cognitive performance, and on the neural correlates of coping with such distraction. We investigated whether activity in the brain regions sensitive to emotional distraction would show dissociable patterns of co-variation with measures indexing individual variations in trait anxiety and cognitive performance (Denkova et. al., 2010). Past studies on stress and anxiety disorders has considered factors like genetic, physiological, or behavioral phenomena in isolation. Separate studies had been conducted and results were not integrated. Recent studies changed the tradition since more comprehensive developmental studies have been done that are very important for their inclusion of discoveries from adult social and genetic neuroscience research (Nolte et. al, 2011). Anxiety disorders can also bring substance use disorders to people. The “self-medication” model of substance use and the concept of “negative affect alcoholism” explain the behavior of depressed and anxious people who may use substances to help themselves in coping up with their feelings. The negative feelings may lead to heavy problems on heavy substance use because the prevailing belief is that the substances can comfort them and reduce uncomfortable feelings. Anxiety therefore increases the frequency and quantity of the substances used (Marmorstein et.al, 2011). Anxiety is also present in education and learning. Anxiety causes mental block to students. They may be proven better learners in other subjects but due to anxiety, certain subject areas become difficult for them. Anxiety causes worry, tension and nervousness and reduces the learning efficiency of students. A good example is foreign language learning wherein anxiety limits the efficiency of learning a different language. In such case, students exhibit specific anxiety reactions which can be distinguished from the general anxiety in a wide variety of situations. Certain specific anxieties were already studied like in test-taking of science and math. In language learning, several approaches were devised to reduce the anxiety of the learner like community language learning and suggestopedia (Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope, 1986). Anxiety is really proven to reduce scientific learning. In line with the existence of anxiety as a learning problem, a study verified the technique of concept mapping as a tool to increase learning efficiency despite the existence of anxiety among learners. Zuckerman Affect Adjective Checklist and the Biology Achievement Test were used to obtain and measure the data gathered. The study concluded that indeed concept mapping reduces anxiety and significant anxiety reduction were observed on the male student participants (Jegede, Alaiyemola, and Okebukola, 1990). Anxiety is also prevalent from the economic and social point-of-view. A good example is the existence of economic restructuring as it may change the societal and economic order into working and nonworking groups. Discrimination increases in the situation as the materialization of the concept may cross the border of both the race and class. It would greatly hurt the nomads and reduce them to a term called animals laborans or just mere animal laborers. Inequality would be more prevalent as the value and respect would be affected toward the differences of people duet to the grouping. Global factors really increase the anxiety of the nation and the individuals as the economic restructuring may lead to colonization and increase racial discrimination (Jones, 2004). On the side of the religion and anxiety, anxiety has a significant role to play. As Sigmund Freud pointed out, perfectionism was not able to cure anxiety. Possibly religion is one of the cause of obsessive-compulsive disorder. OC disorder comes from the anxiety that sprouts from guilt. The role of religion is to advocate its rituals to relieve the anxiety that the believers experience. Religious rituals are distinguished from obsessive-compulsive behavior as religious rituals are done in groups while obsessive-compulsive behavior is exhibited by individuals. Freud pointed out that religious behavior is a “universal obsessional neurosis” and he said religious rituals have the potential to prevent the onset of individual obsessional neurosis (Loewenthal, 2006). Based on the different views gathered regarding the concept of anxiety, it can be considered that the anxiety can invoke and result to negative effects on the lives of the people experiencing the condition and their close acquaintances. Moreover, learning, society, culture and health are all very important in maintaining a good life for each person since each factor has the potential to spark anxiety in varying levels. Thus, it is considered as an important issue given attention not only in the field of medicine and nursing but also in other socio-cultural fields of disciplines. References Beesdo, K., Knappe, S. and Pine, D. (2009). Anxiety and anxiety disorder in children and Adolescents. Psychiatric Clinic North America, 32(3), 483-524. Denkova, E., Wong, G., Dolcos, S., Dolcos, S., Sung, K., Wong, Lihong, Coupland, N. and Dolcos, F. (2010). The impact of anxiety-inducing distraction on cognitive performance: A combined brain imaging and personality investigation. PLoS One, 5(11), e14150. Horwitz, E, Horwitz, M., and Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language and classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 70(2), 125-132. Jegede, O., Alaiyemola, F. and Okebukola, P. (1990). The effect of concept mapping on students' anxiety and achievement in biology. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27(10), 951-960. Jones, R. (2004). Black haze: violence, sacrifice, and manhood in Black Greek-letter fraternities. USA: State University of New York Press. Loewenthal, K. (2006). Religion, culture and mental health. USA: Cambridge University Press. Marmorstein, N., White, H., Loeber, R. and Loeber, M. (2011). Anxiety as a predictor of age at first usage of substances and progression to substance use problems among boys. J Abnormal Child Psychology, 38(2), 211-224. McLaughlin, K. and Hatzenbuehler, M. (2009). Stressful life events, anxiety sensitivity, and internalizing symptoms in adolescents. J Abnormal Psychology, 118(3), 659-669. Nolte, T., Guiney, J., Fonagy, P., Mayes, L. and Luyten, P. (2011). Interpersonal stress regulation and the development of anxiety disorders: An attached-based developmental framework. Front Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 55. Sartori, B., Landgrat, R. and Singewald, N. (2011). The clinical implications of mouse models of enhanced anxiety. Future Neurology. 6(4), 531-571. Read More