If you suffer from three or more of the following symptoms - restlessness,
fatigue, difficulty concentrating, muscle tension, irritability, and sleep distur
bances- you may have Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Dr. Louis Laguna
from Lebanon Valley College, said in a speech given Tuesday, that this form of
anxiety is the most common and most difficult to treat.
In Laguna’s speech, “Chronic Worry as Avoidance of Arousal,” he
emphasized worrying as chronic for many college students and focused on a
thoughts vs. images approach, invoking approximately 30 psychology students in
a discussion of case studies as well as his own pilot study.
“People worry about things,” Laguna said, “that’s commonplace. But it is
when worrying becomes a psychopathological problem that it is worthy of treat
ment.” He found that the average
college student worries about fam
ily members, health and
jobs/school. However, to deter
mine whether this is a pathological
worry, it varies depending on the
frequency, intensity and uncon
trollability of the worried person.
The treatment of GAD or
pathological worry is focused pri
marily on cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at cognitive restructuring and relax
ation. Because GAD is more difficult to treat than other forms of anxiety, Laguna
said patients usually see only modest improvement. “In chronic worriers, there
may be sympathetic inhibition during the worry process.”
Laguna used this to counteract worries with his patients. For example, he
asks patients their biggest fear- i.e. the death of a family member- and puts the
patient in a worse case scenario. He takes them through the stages of this fear,
enacting it for them. “It is interesting the result,” said Laguna. “Their heart rate
increased during the relaxation phase, after the patients realized that their fear had
not come true.”
The highlighted interest in anxiety patients is the thoughts vs. images
development. “There may be an avoidance of images during the worry process,”
explained Laguna. Worrisome patients are either “thought” worriers, in which they
Speech on War Ads
By Steven C. Standridge and Robert Irishman
Capital Times Staff Reporters
Dr. Victor Viser gave a presentation on the motives and emotions behind .
advertising in war last Tuesday in the Gallery Lounge.
Viser said that advertising has played an important role in war efforts since
the days of ancient Egypt. He said the concept of art in war was bom in Egypt and
has carried through into modern times.
During the Civil War and World War I, posters were used to recruit soldiers,
These posters often had themes of patriotism, adventure, and the evil enemy.
Ads from both World Wars had a sense of urgency in winning the war, but
WWFs ads had a very anti-German tone, referring to Germans as “Huns” and show
ing unflattering caricatures of them. Viser also displayed ads depicting attractive
women in order to get men to join the navy, and passed around sheet music of songs
that used to recruit women into serving with the Red Cross.
Viser went through a series of newsletters from the J. Walter Thompson
Advertising Agency of New York, a major advertising contributor during World War
11. The newsletters showed a more sincere side to advertising and gave a sense that
the ad agency was not trying to cash in on perilous times. One of their own employ
ees, John Baker, was killed during the war, and this more than motivated them to do
the best job they could in their part of the war effort. “Their involvement was quite
profound,” said Viser.
Viser pointed out that advertising agencies had a strong relationship with
the U.S. Office of War Information during this period.
Viser then showed some ads from WWII, including a very striking one that
had a man driving a car alone and an outline of Adolf Hitler sitting next to him. The
caption said, “When you ride ALONE, you ride with HITLER!” This was in refer
ence to rationing during wartime and echoed President Bush’s statement, “If you are
not for us, you are against us ”
The presentation, entitled “Ad Men and War: People, Places and
Propaganda,” was the last installment of this semester’s Humanities Colloquium
YOU ARE SuFFERIN
GeneraLizecJ A
“People worry
“that’s common
ing becomes a
that this it
constantly think about what they have to do next or they are image worriers,
whereby they create an image in their head.
Laguna said the latter is not often seen by those who suffer from chronic
worry because they do not want to expose themselves to a worrisome image, and
thus they “think” about things to avoid this imagery. “The best way to access emo
tional reactions,” said Laguna “is through in-vivo exposure (exposure to fearful
stimuli) or imagery.”
This is a learned activity in
chronic worriers as Laguna says those
who worry avoid a situation cognitively.
He emphasized that only way to suc
cessful treat some
one with such anxi-
Laguna said, «y» «*.«■»>“ “>
when worry- visual perception of
problem f earec * stimulus.
Laguna
.lilcUl* completed his own
pilot study using
both worrisome
and non-worrisome students as his sam
ple. However, he did not receive the
results that he had expected due to prob
lems with the exposure time to a stimu
lus, and instrumentation. But he did find
one consistent theme: worriers would
report higher levels of thought than
imagery, proving this particular hypoth
esis correct as well as the theory of
chronic worry as avoidance of arousal
(images).
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