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Anxiety can be a complicated and complex disorder that effects different people in different ways. Anxiety includes feelings of excessive and/or unrealistic fearfulness towards future or current events. Under the umbrella of anxiety, generalized anxiety is characterized as excessive worry, tenseness, and apprehension towards every day life events. Sometimes this worry comes from stimuli, but in other situations, there is no obvious reasons to worry. Another branch of anxiety is panic disorder. This disorder includes spontaneous episodes of intense dread and fear. Some physical symptoms during a panic attack episode can be chest pains, fear of loss of control, trembling, tightness in the throat and hot flashes. Major depressive disorder is characterized as extended feelings of intense sadness, loss of interest in activities, fatigue and feelings of worthlessness.

Being diagnosed in 3rd grade with generalized anxiety, major depressive disorder and panic disorder, I have been aware of what anxiety was and how it impacted me very early in my life. Although, because of the stigmatization of mental health, I never talked about it. But, a lot of things I constantly hear regarding my anxiety is, “take a breath, it’s not that big of a deal,” or “just be happy, you’ll be fine” or “it’s all in your head.” A lot of these things, instead of making me feel better, created more anxiety. Through learning about the psychological and scientific background of anxiety and depression, it has been cool to point to something that causes these feelings. When sometimes not knowing specifics of where my anxiety and depression stem from, pointing to reduced norepinephrine and serotonin, is in a way very freeing. Also looking at things like PET scans of the brain’s energy consumption has been a nice way to not only reduce the stigma in my conversations with others, but the stigma I have about myself having these disorders. Knowing not to believe the things I am hearing from my friends about “getting over it” through recognizing what these disorders truly are, has given me peace. I am excited to use the things we learn in class to spark conversation with people I know have preconceived ideas about these anxiety and mood disorders.

Reinforcement is any event that strengthens the behavior it follows and it can either be positive or negative. Many people believe positive and negative reinforcement to mean it is either good or bad, but that is not true. Positive reinforcement is increasing the behavior by presenting positive stimuli, so you can think of it by adding something. Negative reinforcement on the other hand is increasing behaviors by removing negative stimuli, so as to remove or take away something. This process is used in many different scenarios. Human beings and animals alike learn to adjust their behavior based on the type of reinforcement their behaviors receive.

Ten years ago, I got two yellow Labrador Retrievers and while I was training them I used positive and negative reinforcement to teach them when they were puppies. I would tell the dogs the commands that I wanted them to do, starting off simple with sit and shake. To reinforce the behavior that I wanted them to do I would reward them with a treat. So if they sat after I gave the command they would get a reward. This process was positive reinforcement. When I would give them a command and they did not listen I would not give them a treat. This taught them that they were not doing the correct thing. By using this process I was able to train my dogs to listen to the commands that I told them because their behavior was either getting positively or negatively enforced.

These concepts are related because my dogs were able to learn by their behaviors were correct by getting rewarded with a treat, positive reinforcement, or not getting a treat when they did not follow the command, negative reinforcement. Throughout the process of training my dogs with this tactic I was able to teach them many different things and reward them for doing the correct task.

 

I have always associated OCD with wanting to keep everything clean and in order until I really found out that it is way broader than that. OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, is the persistence of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urge to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions) that cause distress. OCD ranges from person to person and the symptoms can be extremely different depending on the person.

My cousin has OCD, as well as one of my very close friend from home. They don’t constantly shower or wash their hands, but they both repeat constant actions throughout their day that others do not. My cousin, Sam, is constantly checking things. She will look if her straightener is on, even though in her mind she KNOWS she turned it off, she checks the lock on her door, she checks her families locations, etc. These all associate with harm or danger that she fears can happen to herself or the people she loves. My friend from home, Gianna, refuses to throw anything she gets away. She thinks that she might need something for future purposes and won’t be able to ever find it or use it if its thrown away. This causes her to keep everything and hoard things in her room.

Being around people who have OCD, I have realized that OCD can create people to develop really bad anxiety. This is because their mind is always somewhere else thinking about the future and what will happen. Anxiety is feelings of excessive or unrealistic fearfulness for future events.

While OCD can be treated with medication, or something called ERP, or Exposure and Response Prevention therapy. This is when you voluntarily expose yourself to the source of your fears over and over again, without acting out any compulsions to stop your fear.

Another useful link to look into OCD is below: https://www.everydayhealth.com/anxiety-disorders/experts-common-obessions-and-compulsions.aspx

 

In class the last couple weeks, we have discussed positive punishment and reinforcement, as well as negative punishment and reinforcement. These are all different ways to encourage a desired behavior (via reinforcement) or to discourage an unwanted behavior (via punishment). Positive reinforcement adds a reward as a means of encouraging said desired behavior (i.e. giving a child a treat for completing a chore), whereas negative reinforcement removes an unwanted stimulus to encourage the wanted behavior (i.e. when your mom quits nagging after you have taken out the garbage). Positive punishment adds an unwanted stimulius as a means of eliminating an undesired or unwated behavior (timeouts, spankings, etc.), and negative punishment takes away a desired stimulus to discourage undesired behavior (i.e. losing privileges, getting your phone taken away, etc.).

I think everyone at some point or another has experienced some form of both punishment and reinforcement. As a kid, I know my parents positively reinforced good grades each marking period with a reward, like a movie or toy I wanted, and took my sisters and I out to celebrate at the end of each school year to dinner, dessert, or a fun activity of our choice as a way to show their appreciation for all our hard work. That being said, I also faced punishment as a kid. When I misbehaved I had to sit in timeout, or I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, or had to go to bed early. As I got older, this turned into having to give my parents my phone or not being allowed to go places with my friends.

I have also been on the other end of punishment and reinforcing. I did a lot of babysitting in high school, and one summer I consistently babysat a family with 3 small children, ranging from ages 2 to 8. The 2 year old was in the process of potty training, and was really struggling. When I started babysitting her, I made it a point to give her a special treat like a popsicle or a little piece of candy whenever she asked me to take her to the bathroom as a way to encourage her to do it more often. I didn’t punish her when she didn’t, but she quickly realized she would get a treat when she asked me to take her to the bathroom and did it on a regular basis.

In class, we learned about mood disorders, and specifically, major depressive disorder. Depression is one of the most common reasons why people seek professional help. It is usually a response to past or current loss. Depression slows people down, defuses aggression and restrains risk taking. PET scans have shown that people with depression have lower brain energy consumption. The social cognitive perspective explains that depression can arise partly from self-defeating beliefs and negative explanatory styles. People who tend to explain with stable, global, or internal styles tend to be more depressed/have a higher chance of depression than those who explain with temporary, specific, or external styles. Temporary, specific, and external explanations mean that the person has successful coping skills, rather than those who use stable, global, or internal. Some signs of depression are: tiredness and lethargy, feeling of worthlessness, loss of interest in family and friends, and a loss of interest in activities. If these signs last more than two weeks, you might have depression, and should seek help/go to therapy.

One of my close family members ended up being diagnosed with depression in October 2017. She was starting her freshman year of college for music education and she was so excited to be starting. The more she was in college, the more overwhelmed she felt and the more, as she explains it, “worthless”, that she couldn’t do it. One of her professors told her that “school comes first and mental health comes second”. So, she pushed herself past her breaking point, lost all interest in music, and she sadly ended up trying to commit suicide, which lead to her being hospitalized for 3 days. She then had to drop out of college because her mental health had to come first. She then went home and started going to therapy. She has been in a much better place since then, and she recently has finished an intensive 3-month therapy program. Since then, she has started talking about going back to college for music education and has become much better after going to therapy.

She says that if she didn’t go to therapy, that she probably would not have gotten better. She started to become herself again, and the whole family saw a difference in her too.

            Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that causes uncontrollable thoughts, called obsessions, and behaviors, called compulsions, that interfere with daily activities. These compulsions can be repeated numerous times throughout the day in order to soothe the anxiety associated with the obsessions. Common obsessions are the need to be clean, have things in order or specific places, and symmetry. OCD is chronic and there is no cure for the disorder. Many people suffering with OCD also have anxiety or depression because of their obsessions and compulsions. They feel like they cannot escape their disorder because it is so long-lasting and uncontrollable.

I know two people with OCD. One person, my dad, has a milder form of OCD whereas the other, my 6^thgrade teacher, had serious problems controlling his compulsions. My dad is obsessed with keeping himself clean. He had a shower built in his office bathroom so he can shower at work whenever he feels dirty and he washes his face more than 5 times a day. He is not scared of dirt but instead, he just feels the need to be clean more often than the average human. He keeps hand sanitizer in his car, desk, bedside drawer, bathroom, and pockets.

My 6^thgrade teacher let his OCD interfere with his ability to teach in class. Whenever a student would sneeze during his lessons my teacher would make them wash their hands in front of the whole class. He would also clean off the desks and chairs before and after a new group of students came into the classroom. He would get calls from parents complaining that he put their child on the spot in front of all the students. During flu season he would act anxious and uptight about all the germs in his classroom. I remember this being a struggle for him and he would tell us about his diagnosis, but at the time we did not understand what he was really going through. I believe that this disorder interfered with the ability of children to open up and feel close to him. We all saw him as an uptight and weird man but now I realize he had a disorder that is life-changing.

OCD can be a constant struggle for some people. Some of those affected, like my dad, have little obsessions and compulsions that mildly alter their day, and others, like my teacher, have obsessions that change the way they perform at work and interact with others. There is no cure, so those affected with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are constantly in an anxious state which is unfortunate for them, and their relationships.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml

Operant conditioning has been used constantly to have animals of all types perform interesting actions on command. We have seen everything from pigeons spinning in circles to bears playing the trumpet. Teaching these animas to perform actions can be difficult but there is a rather structured process to teaching these animals. There are two main components to teaching these animals and one is shaping which is the process of reinforcing behaviors that are close to the desired action. The other component would be the use of reinforcement to encourage these desired actions. Another thing that helps train these animals is what is called a Skinner box. These boxes isolate animals in an attempt to contain their focus and concentration on certain a task. Skinner boxes were used in one of the examples above with the pigeon.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the ability and process behind operant conditioning I wanted to talk about one of the most impressive cases in my opinion which I learned about in my high school psychology class. Our teacher told us one day that someone named B.F. Skinner (same skinner that made the skinner box) got funding form the United States government. The interesting thing is that the funding was to research whether or not operant conditioning could be used to guide missiles. The process could be simplified to there being a dot (target) in the middle of the screen and the bird would peck to the sides of the dot to keep it in the middle. After they successfully kept the dot in the middle their behavior would be reinforced with food. Slowly but surely these birds were missile guiding machines. Although this was never actually used in real life it is an excellent example on how successful operant conditioning can be.