Anxiety And Depression

Anxiety and depression are two terms used frequently in the area of abnormal psychology. In class, we have discussed how they each can be described using the multidimensional approach; there are many factors that determine if an individual has a disorder or not. In class we observed the multidimensional approach stated that influences can be psychological, biological, and sociocultural and they all spiral into each other. It is not a one-dimensional approach like once thought. Therefore anxiety and depression have biological, psychological, and sociocultural influences. In a mass media article title “Anxious brains are inherited, study finds” on foxnews.com, a scientific study about the biological influences and heritability of depression

The experiment found that neither sex was higher in prevalence of anxiety temperament than the other. In addition, the prevalence of anxiety temperament seemed to decrease with age. It was also determined that brain volume was more heritable than glucose metabolism but it still did not have any significance to the expression of anxiety temperament at early ages. However, there was significant heritability found of glucose metabolism across the brain in relation to anxiety temperament. There were many regions of the brain that showed correlation between anxiety temperament and metabolism (when voxelwise robust regressions were performed) such as the orbital frontal, anterior insular cortices, amygdala, anterior hippocampus, BST, and midbrain regions. However, there was 26% heritability in the amygdala, 57% in the BST, and 53% in the hippocampus. The scientists went through many processes to help narrow down the regions and they established that the main regions that have genetic correlations are portions of the OFC/AI, extended amygdala, and brainstem. The other regions have different roles in this process but the previous three seemed most involved. Now that the tripartite prefrontal-limbic-midbrain circuit and its functions are known it will be of great resource to future investigations and studies. (Fox,

Stephanie Pappas, the author of the mass media article, gave the overall basics of the scientific article. She used correct percentages and details and also included direct quotes from Dr. Kalin himself. With all the information and precise information presented in the study, Pappas did an accurate job providing the main ideas of the paper. Some may think the mass media article needed more detailed information about the various brain regions that correlated with anxiety temperament but I think it would have made it too lengthy. Her purpose was to accurately give an overview of the methods and main results and she did that professionally. She understood the regions that were discovered and she understood that function and not structure was the prime influence of anxiety temperament in early ages. In addition, I cannot find anything wrong with the mass media article in comparison to the scientific article. All of her facts and ideas are accurate. However, one thing I would have liked more explanation on is the methods and the how’s of the experiment. She could have briefly discussed what PET scanning involves or what other methods were used besides PET scanning. However, after reading the mass media article I obtained a clear understanding of the idea behind the scientific