ABSTRACT
Anxiety as an illness or disorder develops when there is a dysregulation in any of the three components of threat detection, threat interpretation, or threat response. A state of persistent hypervigilance will result in overdetection of threats; catastrophic thinking patterns can result in false perceptions of threat; and avoidance and escape behaviors may become over-utilized, resulting in maintenance of fears. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) [3], for anxiety disorders classifies seven major areas of illness: generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, specific phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and acute stress disorder [4]. In the alarm system analogy, these syndromes can be viewed as a predominant disturbance in one or more of the components of threat detection, interpretation, or response. For example, generalized anxiety disorder is a perturbed alarm system, whose threshold for threat detection is set too low. Sharing a low threshold for threat detection, individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder are also likely to perceive harm with a greater sensitivity than others. Once a stimulus has been detected, threat interpretation becomes problematic in the cases of panic disorder, social phobia, specific phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder wherein information is misperceived or processed erroneously (e.g., panic attack symptoms are interpreted as an impending heart attack). Panic disorder, acute stress disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder develop from the response component of the alarm system, where the response either occurs in the absence of danger (i.e., spontaneous panic attacks) or continues to be triggered despite the cessation of the true danger.
