Gorka and her colleagues looked at data from participants who underwent a startle task in two different studies performed at UIC. Previous research by Gorka and colleagues suggests that heightened sensitivity to uncertain threat may be an important factor that characterizes the fear-based internalizing psychopathologies, but most research focuses on panic disorder, so its role in the other fear-based disorders - particularly social anxiety disorder and specific phobias - remains unclear. Predictable threat, on the other hand, produces a discrete fight-or-flight response that has a clear trigger, like a hungry bear coming at you, and it abates once the threat has resolved. Panic disorder is one example - patients are constantly anxious over the fact that they could have a panic attack at any moment, she said. When a person is sensitive to uncertain threat, they can spend the entire day anxious and concerned that something bad could happen to them, Gorka said. “It could be something like not knowing exactly when your doctor will call with test results.” “It’s what we call anticipatory anxiety,” says Gorka, who is corresponding author on the study, published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Uncertain threat is unpredictable in its timing, intensity, frequency or duration and elicits a generalized feeling of apprehension and hypervigilance. “A treatment, or set of treatments, focused on sensitivity to uncertain threat could result in a more impactful and efficient way of treating a variety of anxiety disorders and symptoms.”
“We may, one day, open up clinics that focus on treating the underlying common neurobiology of the patient’s symptoms instead of individual diagnoses,” says Stephanie Gorka, research assistant professor of psychiatry and a clinical psychologist in the UIC College of Medicine. The finding could help steer treatment of these disorders away from diagnosis-based therapies to treating their common characteristics. Several anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and specific phobias, share a common underlying trait: increased sensitivity to uncertain threat, or fear of the unknown, report researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Stephanie Gorka, research assistant professor of psychiatry and a clinical psychologist in the UIC College of Medicine.
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