distress

Examples of distress in the following topics:

• Introduction to Stress

  • Stress can be either positive (eustress) or negative (distress).
  • Importantly, the body itself cannot physically discern between distress or eustress; the distinction is dependent on the experience of the individual experiencing the stress.
  • Distress, or negative stress, has negative implications, and is usually perceived to be potentially overwhelming and out of a person's control.
  • Any event can cause either distress or eustress, depending on how the individual interprets the information.
  • For example, traumatic social events may cause great distress, but also eustress in the form of resilience, coping, and fostering a sense of community.

• Specific Effects of Stress: Cancer

  • When people feel that they are unable to manage or control life changes that are caused by cancer, they are said to be in distress.
  • Distress has become increasingly recognized as a factor that can reduce the quality of life of cancer patients, and some evidence indicates that extreme distress is associated with poorer clinical outcomes.

• Specific Phobia

  • Specific phobias involve excessive, distressing, and persistent fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation.
  • A person diagnosed with a specific phobia (formerly known as a "simple phobia") experiences excessive, distressing, and persistent fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation (such as animals, enclosed spaces, elevators, or flying) (APA, 2013).
  • Exposure to the object of the phobia nearly always elicits extremely distressing symptoms of anxiety, either immediately ("situationally bound") or after some time delay ("situationally predisposed").
  • The person either avoids the phobic situation(s) or else endures it with extreme distress.
  • The avoidance and/or distress associated with the phobia must interfere significantly with the person's academic or social functioning.

• Introduction to Personality Disorders

  • The 10 personality disorders mentioned in the DSM-5 involve pervasive and enduring personality styles that differ from cultural expectations and cause distress and/or conflict with others.
  • causes them and/or others around them "clinically significant" distress and impairment in important areas of functioning;
  • That said, though personality disorders are typically associated with significant distress or disability, they are also ego-syntonic, which means that individuals do not feel as though their values, thoughts, and behaviors are out of place or unacceptable.
  • In addition, individuals with personality disorders may not even be able to recognize that their personality is causing distress or issues with other people.

• Specific Effects of Stress: PTSD

  • The stressor must cause significant distress in almost any person and be outside the range of "normal" human experience.
  • Persistent re-experiencing - One or more of these must be present in the victim: flashback memories, recurring distressing dreams, subjective re-experiencing of the traumatic event(s), or intense negative psychological or physiological response to any objective or subjective reminder of the traumatic event(s).
  • Significant impairment - The symptoms reported must lead to "clinically significant distress or impairment" in major domains of life activity, such as social relations, occupational activities or other "important areas of functioning".
  • Exposure therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy that involves assisting trauma survivors to re-experience distressing trauma-related memories and reminders in order to facilitate habituation and successful emotional processing of the trauma memory.

• Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies

  • At the core of cognitive therapy is the idea of cognitive biases, or irrational beliefs that cause distress in a person's life.
  • It has been found that by adjusting these thoughts people's emotional distress can be reduced.
  • When someone is distressed or anxious, the way they see and evaluate themselves can become negative.
  • DBT involves a combination of standard cognitive-behavioral techniques (e.g., reframing, emotion regulation testing) with acceptance approaches (e.g., distress tolerance,  mindful awareness).
  • These strategies include mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

  • In psychology, trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event.
  • In addition, the person must experience intrusions (persistent re-experiencing of the event through flashbacks, distressing dreams, etc.); avoidance (of stimuli associated with the trauma, talking about the trauma, etc.); negative alterations in cognitions and mood (such as decreased capacity to feel certain feelings or distorted self-blame); and alterations in arousal and reactivity (such as difficulty sleeping, problems with anger or concentration, reckless behavior, or heightened startle response).
  • These symptoms must last for more than 1 month and result in clinically significant distress or impairment in multiple domains of life, such as relationships, work, or other daily functioning.
  • In CBT, individuals learn to identify thoughts that make them feel afraid or upset and replace them with less distressing thoughts.

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

  • Obsessions are characterized as persistent, unintentional, and unwanted thoughts and urges that are highly intrusive, unpleasant, and distressing (APA, 2013).
  • These compulsions can be alienating and time-consuming, often causing severe emotional, interpersonal, and even financial distress.
  • Their idea of their "ideal self" would not include the symptoms of OCD, and therefore the disorder causes a lot of distress.

• Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia)

  • The kinds of social situations that may cause distress include public speaking, having a conversation, meeting strangers, eating in restaurants, or using public restrooms.
  • Although many people become anxious in social situations like public speaking, the fear, anxiety, and avoidance experienced in social anxiety disorder are highly distressing and lead to serious impairments in life.
  • This anxiety—or efforts to avoid the anxiety-inducing situation—must cause considerable distress and an impaired ability to function in at least some parts of social, occupational, academic, or daily life.

• Other Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

  • Hoarding disorder is a pattern of behavior that is characterized by excessive acquisition and an inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that cover the living areas of the home and cause significant distress or impairment.
  • This difficulty must be due to strong urges to save items and/or distress associated with discarding.
  • In compulsive hoarding, the symptoms are presented in the normal stream of consciousness and as such, they are not perceived as repetitive or distressing like in OCD patients.
  • They must experience distress related to this behavior and repeatedly try to stop, and the symptoms must interfere with some aspect of social, occupational, or daily life functioning.
  • The person must experience distress about this behavior and repeatedly try to stop.