ANXIETY – GENERAL BACKGROUND OF ANALYSING THE PATHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON AND NORMAL EMOTIONAL MOOD

摘要

All persons experience feelings of anxiety; it is a normal and positive dimension of human life and does not refer only to exaggerated worries. There is a distinction between the healthy and unhealthy anxiety, describing the first one as a concern and vigilance which helps people coping with different or difficult situations; the unhealthy anxiety is an emotional response to the threats perceived as real, but which are largely imaginary due to a very low probability of occurrence. Yerkes and Dodson (apaud Tyrer, 1999) have shown that anxiety has an unusual relation with performance. The pathological forms of anxiety are listed. The cognitive model of anxiety, which is seen as an adaptive response to the environment, starts with the perception of threat in a specific situation, the meaning that people attach to the situation is determined by their schemes and the memory of their past similar situations. The behavioural theories postulate that anxiety is a conditioned response to specific environmental stimuli.