Anxiety Disorders Assessment

Introduction

Anxiety is one of the most common and universal emotions. This emotional reaction to the perception of threatening or dangerous stimuli occurs throughout an individual's lifetime. In fact, anxiety elicited by stimuli or situations such as animals, physical danger and separation is an early biological acquisition, whose function is to protect the child from potential dangers. In this sense, anxiety is undoubtedly of value in relation to the preservation of the human being.

The conceptualization of anxiety has varied considerably over recent decades. On the one hand, critics of the unidimensional view of anxiety have proposed a new multidimensional approach. From this perspective, anxiety is a combination of responses, including cognitive, physiological and behavioural (motor) reactions. These responses are provoked by identifiable cognitive-subjective, physiological or environmental stimuli. In spite of the lack of an accurate explanation of the contents of each system, and there being some discrepancies among authors on what might be understood by the responses of the cognitive system or, to a lesser extent, those of the physiological system (Cone & Hawkins, 1977; Fernández-Ballesteros, 1983), this classification of the different anxiety responses in three systems is widely accepted and used.

In addition, since the seminal works of Cattell or Spielberger in the 1960s, the differentiation between state and trait anxiety has become a classic one. State anxiety is conceptualized as a transitory emotional reaction to the individual's perception of a threatening or dangerous situation, while trait anxiety is defined as a relatively stable tendency to interpret situations as threatening or dangerous, and to react to them with anxiety. Recent works by Endler and his co-workers propose a multidimensional nature for trait anxiety, highlighting the existence of different facets (social evaluation, physical danger, etc.) closely related to specific situational areas.

With the aim of integrating the above-mentioned aspects, anxiety must be considered as an emotional response, or pattern of responses, that includes unpleasant cognitive aspects, physiological aspects characterized by high arousal of the Autonomous Nervous System, and inaccurate and less adaptive motor or behavioural reactions. The anxiety response may be provoked both by situational external and internal stimuli such as thoughts, ideas, images, etc., perceived by the individual as threatening or dangerous. Such anxiety-eliciting stimuli (external or internal) will be mainly determined by the subject's characteristics; thus, there are remarkable individual differences in relation to the tendency to manifest anxiety reactions in different situations (Miguel-Tobal, 1990).

Anxiety as Disorder

Up to now, we have considered anxiety as a normal emotional response of an individual to different situations or circumstances. However, when its frequency, intensity and duration are excessive, producing serious limitations in different facets of individuals' lives and reducing their ability to adapt to the environment, we must talk about pathological anxiety.

Anxiety is closely related to anxiety disorders, depression, disorders traditionally labelled as neurotic, many psychotic disorders, and a wide [Page 41]variety of psychophysiological problems such as cardiovascular disorders, peptic ulcers, headaches, premenstrual syndrome, asthma, skin disorders, and so on. It is also involved in sexual disorders, addictive behaviour and eating disorders; more recently, there are findings that relate anxiety to weakness of the immune system.

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