Agoraphobia

A group of 48 inpatient alcoholics were studied using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia--Life-time Version (SADS-L) and the Brief Standard Self-rating for Phobic Patients. Approximately one-quarter of the patients were diagnosed as suffering from agoraphobia and social and mixed phobias. Approximately 44% were diagnosed as suffering from anxiety disorders and 46% had suffered from an episode of major depression. Data from the self-rating questionnaire were consistent with the diagnostic data. The alcoholics with phobias had experienced more severe dysphoric feelings than nonphobic alcoholics with other psychiatric disorders.

Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate that agoraphobia is the lived body expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home, and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia. I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able to feel properly at-home.

BackgroundMuch about the long-term course of anxiety disorders is unknown. The present study utilizes a naturalistic, longitudinal, short-interval follow-up design to elucidate the course of anxiety disorders over 14 years in a largely middle-aged adult sample recruited from out-patient psychiatry and primary care facilities.MethodThe sample consisted of 453 participants with a diagnosis of panic disorder (PD), social phobia (SP) and/or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Anxiety symptom ratings were tracked using weekly psychiatric status ratings (PSRs). Controlling for demographic and clinical variables, the course of PD, GAD and SP were examined using longitudinal growth models, with the most severe PSR at each follow-up point as the main outcome variable.ResultsPSRs significantly decreased in severity over time in each of the three disorders. In the interaction effects models, age×time had a significant effect on course for PD and GAD, but not for SP, in that older age was assoc...

The recently published DSM-5 contains a number of changes pertinent to panic disorder and agoraphobia. These changes include separation of panic disorder and agoraphobia into separate diagnoses, the addition of criteria and guidelines for distinguishing agoraphobia from specific phobia, the addition of a 6-month duration requirement for agoraphobia, the addition of panic attacks as a specifier to any DSM-5 diagnosis, changes to descriptors of panic attack types, as well as various changes to the descriptive text. It is crucial that clinicians and researchers working with individuals presenting with panic attacks and panic-like symptoms understand these changes. The purpose of the current paper is to provide a summary of the main changes, to critique the changes in the context of available empirical evidence, and to highlight clinical implications and potential impact on mental health service utilization. Several of the changes have the potential to improve access to evidence-based t...

Գրքում ներկայացված են տագնապի և տագնապային խանգարումների հիմնական տեսակները, ինչպես նաև դրանց պատճառականության, զարգացման և հաղթահարման ժամանակակից պատկերացումները։ Քննարկվում են վերջիններիս նեյրոկոգնիտիվ մոդելը, նեյրոկենսաբանական մեխանիզմներն ու ոչ դեղորայքային հաղթահարման մեթոդները։ Գիրքը նախատեսված է ինչպես սեփական տագնապը կամ տագնապային խանգարումը ինքնուրույն և/կամ մասնագետի օգնությամբ հաղթահարել ցանկացողների, այնպես էլ իրենց այցելուներին օգնել ցանկացող հոգեկան առողջության և հարակից ոլորտների մասնագետների (հոգեբանների, հոգեթերապևտների, հոգեբույժների, նյարդաբանների, սոցիալական աշխատողների, հատուկ մանկավարժների և այլոց) համար։ Գիրքը հիմնված է հեղինակի ոչ միայն մասնագիտական, այլև անձնական փորձի վրա։

В книге представлны основные виды тревоги и тревожных расстройств, а также, современные взгляды на причины возникновения, развития и преодоления последних.Обсуждаются, также, нейрокогнитивная модель, нейробиологические механизмы и нелекарственные методы преодоления тревоги и тревожных расстройств. Книга предназначена, как для тех кто собирается самому и/или с помощью специалиста преодолеть собственную тревогу или тревожное расстройство, так и для профессионалов сферы психического здоровья и смежных областей (психологи, психотерапевты, психиатры, неврологи, социальные работники, специальные педагоги и др.), которые желают помочь своим клиентам. Книга основана не только на профессиональном, но и личном опыте автора.

There is an overview of the main types of anxiety and anxiety disorders, as well as, the current views of the etiology, development and treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. A neurocognitive model, and the neurobiological mechanisms of anxiety, and also, the non-medication treatment methodsfor anxiety disorders. The book is intended both for those who are going to overcom their own anxiety and anxiety disorder by themselvesand/or with the help of a specialist, and for the professionals of mental health and related fields (psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, neurologists, social workers, special pedagogues/educators, and others) who want to help their clients.The book is based not only on the professional, but also personal experience of the author.

Anxiety is sometimes thought of as either a state of mind, lacking a thick spatial depth, or otherwise conceived as something that individuals undergo alone. Such presuppositions are evident both conceptually and clinically. In this paper, I present a contrasting account of anxiety as being a situated affect. I develop this claim by pursuing a phenomenological analysis of agoraphobia. Far from a disembodied, displaced, and solitary state of mind, agoraphobic is revealed as being thickly mediated by bodily, spatial, and intersubjective dimensions.

In this comparative study of Angela Carter's " The Lady of the House of Love " (1979) and Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979) eating habits, relation to the domestic and to (ir)rationality are examined in the female and male characters in both works to show how their authors create gender hybridity. Drawing upon Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), the article proposes that the hybridity reproduces patriarchal transfer of power.

To describe the psychometric properties of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime version (K-SADS-PL) interview, which surveys additional disorders not assessed in prior K-SADS, contains improved probes and anchor points, includes diagnosis-specific impairment ratings, generates DSM-III-R and DSM-IV diagnoses, and divides symptoms surveyed into a screening interview and five diagnostic supplements.Subjects were 55 psychiatric outpatients and 11 normal controls (aged 7 through 17 years). Both parents and children were used as informants. Concurrent validity of the screen criteria and the K-SADS-PL diagnoses was assessed against standard self-report scales. Interrater (n = 15) and test-retest (n = 20) reliability data were also collected (mean retest interval: 18 days; range: 2 to 38 days).Rating scale data support the concurrent validity of screens and K-SADS-PL diagnoses. Interrater agreement in scoring screens and diagnoses was high (range: 93% to 100%). Test-retest reliability κ coefficients were in the excellent range for present and/or lifetime diagnoses of major depression, any bipolar, generalized anxiety, conduct, and oppositional defiant disorder (.77 to 1.00) and in the good range for present diagnoses of posttraumatic stress disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (.63 to .67).Results suggest the K-SADS-PL generates reliable and valid child psychiatric diagnoses. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 1997, 36(7): 980–988.

Influenced by the works of Merleau-Ponty and of Heidegger, I argue that our spatial experience is rooted in the way we are engaged with and in our world. Space is not a predetermined and uniform geometrical grid, but the network of engagement and alienation that provides one's orientation in the inter-human world. Drawing on this phenomenological conception of space, I show that the neuroses of agoraphobia and, more unexpectedly, hypochondria must not be understood as mere "psychological" problems, but rather as problems of one's overall way of spatial being-in-the-world, that is, of "dwelling." With respect to both neuroses, I argue that subjects experience a sense of spatial contraction that mirrors a contraction in their abilities to engage with the people, the environment, and the situations that surround them.

How is our experience of the world affected by our experience of others? Such is the question I will be exploring in this paper. I will do so via the agoraphobic condition. In agoraphobia, we are rewarded with an enriched glimpse into the intersubjective formation of the world, and in particular to our embodied experience of that social space. I will be making two key claims. First, intersubjectivity is essentially an issue of intercorporeality, a point I shall explore with recourse to Merleau-Ponty’s account of the prepersonal body. The implication of this claim is that evading or withdrawing from the other remains structurally impossible so long as we remain bodily subjects. Second, the necessary relation with others defines our thematic and affective experience of the world. Far from a formal connection with others, the corporeal basis of intersubjectivity means that our lived experience of the world is mediated via our bodily relations with others. In this way, intercorporeality reveals the body as being dynamically receptive to social interactions with others. Each of these claims is demonstrated via a phenomenological analysis of the agoraphobe’s interaction with others. From this analysis, I conclude that our experience of the world is affected by our experience of others precisely because we are in a bodily relation with others. Such a relation is not causally linked, as though first there were a body, then a world, and then a subject that provided a thematic and affective context to that experience. Instead, body, other, and world are each intertwined in a single unity and cannot be considered apart.