Name: 強迫症和焦慮症。心理學速成班#29 (OCD and Anxiety Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #29)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:35:56.000Z
Duration: 11 min 32 s
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Ever heard a really good joke about polio? Or made a casual reference to someone having

hepatitis? Or maybe teased your buddy by saying he has muscular dystrophy?

Of course you have never done that, because you are not a terrible person. You'd never

make fun of someone for having a physical illness, but folks make all kinds of offhand

remarks about people having mental illnesses and never give it a second thought.

How often have you heard a person say that someone's psycho, or schizo, or bipolar, or

OCD? I can pretty much guarantee that the people who used those terms had no idea what they actually meant.

We've talked about how psychological disorders and the people who have them have often  been stigmatized.

But at the same time, we tend to minimize those disorders, using them as nicknames for

things that people do, think, or say, that may not exactly be universal, but are still basically healthy.

And we all do it, but only because we don't really understand those conditions.

But that's why we're here, because as we go deeper into psychological disorders, we get

a clearer understanding of their symptoms, types, causes, and the perspectives that help explain them.

And some of the most common disorders have their root in an unpleasant mental state that's

It's a part of being human, but for some people it can develop into intense fear, and paralyzing

dread, and ultimately turn into full-fledged anxiety disorder.

Defining psychological disorders again: a deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional pattern

of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that interferes with the ability to function in a healthy way.

So when it comes to anxiety, that definition is the difference between the guy you probably

called phobic because he didn't like Space Mountain as much as you did, and the person

who truly can't leave their house for fear of interacting with others.

It's the difference between the girl who's teased by her friends as being OCD because

she does her laundry every night and the girl who has to wash her hands so often that they bleed.

Starting today, you're going to understand all of those terms you've been using.

We commonly equate anxiety with fear, but anxiety disorders aren't just a matter of fear itself.

A key component is also what we do to get rid of that fear.

Say someone almost drowned as a kid and is now afraid of water.

A family picnic at the river may cause that anxiety to bubble up, and to cope, they may

stay sequestered in the car, less anxious but probably still unhappy while the rest

So, in clinical terms, anxiety disorders are characterized not only by distressing, persistent

anxiety but also often by the dysfunctional behaviors that reduce that anxiety.

At least a fifth of all people will experience a diagnosable anxiety disorder of some kind

at some point in their lives. That is a lot of us.

So I want to start out with a condition that used to be categorized as an anxiety disorder

but is now considered complex enough to be in a class by itself, Obsessive-Compulsive

You probably know that condition is characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts, which become

obsessions, which are sometimes accompanied by actions, which become compulsions.

And it is a great example of a psychological disorder that could use some mental-health myth busting.

Being neat, and orderly, and fastidious does not make you OCD.

OCD is a debilitating condition whose sufferers take normal behaviors like, washing your hands,

or double checking that you turned off the stove and perform them compulsively.

And they often use these compulsive, even ritualistic behaviors to relieve intense and unbearable anxiety.

So, soon they're scrubbing their hands every five minutes, or constantly checking the stove,

or counting the exact number of steps they take everywhere they go.

If you're still unclear about what it means for disorders to be deviant, distressful and

dysfunctional, OCD might help you understand.

Because it is hard to keep a job, run a household, sit still, or do much of anything if you feel

intensely compelled to run to the kitchen twenty times an hour.

And both the thoughts and behaviors associated with OCD are often driven by a fear that is itself

obsessive, like if you don't go to the kitchen right now your house will burn down and your

child will die which makes the condition that much more distressing and self-reinforcing.

There are treatments that help OCD including certain kinds of psychotherapy and some psychotropic drugs.

But the key here is that it is not a description for your roommate who cleans her bathroom

twice a week, or the guy in the cubicle next to you, who only likes to use green felt tip pens.

And even though OCD is considered its own unique set of psychological issues, the pervasive

senses of fear, worry, and loss of control that often accompany it, have a lot in common

The broadest of these is Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD.

People with this condition tend to feel continually tense and apprehensive, experiencing unfocused,

Of course feeling this way occasionally is common enough, but feeling it consistently

for over six months - the length of time required for a formal diagnosis - is not.

Folks with GAD worry all the time and are frequently agitated and on edge, but unlike

some other kinds of anxiety, patients often can't identify what's causing the anxiousness, so

Then there's Panic Disorder, which affects about 1 in 75 people, most often teens and young adults.

It's calling card is Panic Attacks or sudden episodes of intense dread or sudden fear that

Unlike the symptoms of GAD which can be hard to pin down, Panic Attacks are brief, well-defined,

and sometimes severe bouts of elevated anxiety.

And if you've ever had one, or been with someone who has, you know that they call these attacks

They can cause chest pains and racing heartbeat, difficulty breathing and a general sense that

you're going crazy or even dying. It's as awful as it sounds.

We've talked a lot about the body's physiological fight or flight response and that's definitely

part of what's going on here, even though there often isn't an obvious trigger.

There may be a genetic pre-disposition to panic disorder, but persistent stress or having

experienced psychological trauma in the past can also set you up for these attacks.

And because the attacks themselves can be downright terrifying, a common trigger for

panic disorder is simply the fear of having another panic attack.

Say you have a panic attack on a bus, or you find yourself hyperventilating in front of

dozens of strangers with nowhere to go to calm yourself down, that whole ordeal might

make you never want to be in that situation again, so your anxiety could lead you to start

At this point the initial anxiety has spun of into a fear of anxiety which means, welcome

you've migrated into another realm of anxiety disorder, Phobias.

And again this is a term that's been misused for a long time to describe people who, say,

they don't like cats, or are uncomfortable on long plane trips.

Simply experiencing fear or discomfort doesn't make you phobic.

In clinical terms, phobias are persistent, irrational fears of specific objects, activities,

or situations, that also, and this is important, leads to avoidance behavior.

You hear a lot about fears of heights, or spiders, or clowns, and those are real things.

They're specific phobias that focus on particular objects or situations.

For example, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland is a seven-thousand meter span that

crosses the Chesapeake Bay, if you want to get to or from Eastern Maryland that's pretty

much the only way to do it, at least in a car, but there are thousands of people who