The “Crash Course” YouTube channel features a video about OCD and anxiety disorders. It begins with the narrator discussing how terms related to these disorders are often misused to describe behaviors that, while perhaps odd, may actually be universal and not point to a mental health issue. The video says that this minimizes OCD and anxiety disorders, which are actually serious psychological disorders. We are told that a psychological disorder is characterized by “a deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional pattern of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that interferes with the ability to function in a healthy way.” This video encourages greater understanding of psychological disorders, specifically anxiety disorders, in order to prevent others from belittling or misinterpreting them.
The speaker highlights the difference between the anxiety or orderliness that we all exhibit sometimes and an actual anxiety disorder or case of OCD. The example he presents for anxiety is the case of someone who is scared to ride Space Mountain versus someone who isolates himself inside his house out of fear of social interaction. The example he gives for OCD is the case of someone who does her laundry
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From the learning perspective, conditioning, observational learning, and cognition can explain the source of anxiety. Stimulus generalization can cause you to fear something that you had a bad experience with. Next, this fear is strengthened by reinforcement when you escape the thing you are afraid of. While this may temporarily relieve anxiety, it makes the fear stronger by reinforcing the phobic behavior. Cognition is involved in the development of an anxiety disorder in that the way we interpret stimuli like sounds and images determines what effect the stimulus has on us. An anxiety disorder can also be learned by way of acquired anxiety, which is a fear that is adopted by learning through the observation of other