Some people experience emotional inertia temporarily, usually after an intense emotional experience. However longer term emotional ineria can be experienced by some people spanning hours, days and in extreme cases, longer periods of time.

Emotional Flexibility is the ability to change ones emotion so that it is consistent with the situation presented in that moment in time.

These are elements of emotional maturity with the level of emotional inertia / flexibility being forms of measuring emotional maturity.

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Behavioral Activation or BA is a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) (see A-Z list) this is primarily used for for treating depression and depressive illnesses, however it is useful with many anxiety and fear based issues.

Behavioral Activation is considered to be a third generation form of CBT in that it has emerged from a series of analytical studies (component analysis) of the effectiveness of the various forms of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. There are currently over 35 types of CBT. This research¹ showed that when dealing with clinical depression, as opposed to anxiety and fear disorders or issues, the cognitive elenments of the treatment tended to have minimal impact and therefore Behavioral Activation focuesses on the behavioural elements of therapy.

How does Behavioral Activation work?

The principle behind Behavioral Activation is to use rewards and punishments to guide an individuals behaviour into more normailised patterns.

The stages of the therapy include:

1. The individuals creates with their threrapist, a list of things that are reinforcing the current behaviour patterns and a list of activities that reinforce normalised behaviour.
2. The individual then creates a set of behavioural goals which the therapist then tracks
3. They then create a plan or hirearchy of action to incrementally modify the individuals behaviour through a set of reinforcements and in some cases punishments.
4. They would then use an objective measure (The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)) to measure the effect.

Effectiveness

Behavioral Activation is considered to be very effective in the treatment of depression and depressive illnesses. A large-scale treatment study found Behavioral Activation to be more effective than cognitive therapy and gives similar results to treatment with medication with acute clinical depression².

There is some evidence that Behavioral Activation can be used successfully to treat of anxiety and fear related issues³ and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)⁴.

1. Jacobson, N.S., Dobson, K.S., Truax, P.A., Addis, M.E., Koerner, K., Gollan, J.K., Gortner, E., & Prince, S.E. (1996). A component analysis of cognitive-behavioral treatment for depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 64 (2): 295-304.

2. Dimidjian, S., et al. (2006). Randomized Trial of Behavioral Activation, Cognitive Therapy, and Antidepressant Medication in the Acute Treatment of Adults With Major Depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 74 (4): 658-670

3. Hopko, D.R., Robertson, S.M.C. & Lejuez, C.W. (2006). Behavioral Activation for Anxiety Disorders. The Behavior Analyst Today, 7 (2), 212-224

4. Mulick, P.S., Landes, S.J. and Kanter, J.W. (2005). Contextual Behavior Therapies in the Treatment of PTSD: A Review – IJBCT, 1 (3), 223–229

Go to A-Z list of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

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These are all real phobias:

Selaphobia - fear of flashing xmas lights

Festivalisophobia - a phobia of the whole Christmas thing

Meleagrisophobia - fear of turkey (the bird not the country!)

Krikophobia - fear of church services

Ligyrophobia - fear of crackers going BANG!

Cyssanophobia - fear of kissing under the mistletoe

Teleophobia - fear of religious ceremonies

Syngenesophobia - fear of the relatives & relations

Siderophobia - fear of stars

Familiaphobia - fear of your family!

Mythophobia - fear of myths

Ghabhphobia - fear of presents or gifts

Phagophobia - fear of eating

Have a great and fear free Christmas from all of the Fear Course team.

ICD10 is maintained and published by the World Health Organisation's (WHO) and it is used primarily by the World Health Organisation member states to classify and diagnose every illness and describes their symptoms.

The ICD10 incorporates section F, 'The Blue Book' or the Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines. This is similar to the United States DSM-IV or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, however the ICD10 is what most of the rest of the world (including the UK) uses to diagnose mental conditions including anxiet and fear related issues..

The full ICD10 contains details and how to diagnose every known mental disorder from intoxication to retardation and everything between, including neuronal injuries and every fear and anxiety disorder. As you can imagine it is quite a large set of documents.

Unlike the American DSM-IV 5 Axis system the ICD10 has 11 main categories of Mental Disorders, which are as follows:

1. F0 Organic, including symptomatic, mental disorders
2. F1 Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of psychoactive substances
3. F2 Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders
4. F3 Mood [affective] disorders
5. F4 Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders
6. F5 Behavioural syndromes associated with physiological disturbances and physical factors
7. F6 Disorders of personality and behaviour in adult persons
8. F7 Mental retardation
9. F8 Disorders of psychological development
10. F9 Behavioural and emotional disorders with onset usually occurring in childhood and adolescence
11. F00 Unspecified Mental Disorders

The main difference between the DSM-IV and ICD10 is that the DSM is categorised based an symptoms and the ICD is categorised based on cause and symptoms. Anxiety and fear related issues like phobias etc are mainly contained in F3, F4, and F5 with a few in F8 and F9.

See an article on the DSM-IV.

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Definition

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is often defined as a severe anxiety or psycological disorder than can develop following direct personal contact with some form of traumatic event.

Criteria for diagnosing PTSD

Usually there are 14 main critera that have to be satisfied for a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:

1. The person has to have direct experience of a traumatic event where the person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that have involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others, and they responed to the event with intense fear, helplessness, or genuine horror.
2. The person concerned has to keep re-experiencing the event either by way of flash-backs, re-living the event, nightmares, illusions or hallucinations or reenacting the event in a way that causes distress,
   
3. That the individual is avoiding certain 'triggers' (thoughts, feelings, places, objects, situations or other people) for fear of becoming distressed.
4. Feelings of being isolated, detached or estrangement from others
5. Feeling of numbness or the inability to have certain feelings any more (like love or closeness).
6. The sense of not having a future or the inability to project positively into the future. Suffers often can't see beyond today.
7. Loss of interest in connecting with others
8. Difficulty falling or staying asleep
9. Irritability or outbursts of anger
   
10. Difficulty concentrating
    
11. Hypervigilance
    
12. Exaggerated startle response
13. That the symptoms have lasted for more than one month
14. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of their life

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is considered chronic if the sympoms last for more than 3 months.

Delayed Onset PTSD can occur where there is a delay of 6 months or more between the event and the start of the symptoms.

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You can learn to take control of your emotions at will, when and where you want from the experts.

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These articles are protected by worldwide Copyright © David Wilkinson / Centre i Ltd. 2008 - 2010: you may link to these articles but copying or re-posting / embedding without acknowledgement is a breach of copyright.