DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
A more surprising therapeutic approach was reported in 2009. Emily
Holmes at the University of Oxford and her collaborators showed that
ten minutes spent playing the computer-based game Tetris led partici-
pants to experience fewer flashbacks to a disturbing film clip they had
seen earlier, compared with participants who had spent the same time
sitting quietly. Holmes’ team called their approach a “cognitive vaccine”,
which they suggested may have occupied the “sensory-perceptual”
system, thereby preventing the memory of the traumatic scenes from
getting lodged there.
It’s easy to forget that the majority of people who survive traumatic
experiences actually don’t go on to develop PTSD. In fact, a curious
occurrence in large-scale disasters is that people living in the most
devastated regions are actually the least concerned by the ongoing risks,
a phenomenon that’s been dubbed “psychological typhoon eye”. This
was documented in interviews carried out by Shu Li of the Institute of
Psychology, Beijing with survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake,
which killed over 68,000 people. Li’s team weren’t sure why the effect
occurred, but it may be related to cognitive dissonance (see p.27), leading
people to justify their decision to stay in a dangerous location by down-
playing the ongoing risks.
THE BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL APPROACH
As with other mental disorders, psychologists have attempted to under-
stand anxiety on several levels, including the biological, behavioural and
cognitive. From a biological perspective, attention has focused on the
peripheral nervous system, with its two balanced elements – the sympa-
thetic and parasympathetic. The first cranks the body up for action, the
second calms things down. Stated crudely, people with anxiety disorders
are thought to have some kind of dysfunction in the balance between
these two systems. Among the chief culprits for triggering this imbal-
ance are the amygdala – the two almond-shaped brain structures that are
known to be involved in emotional learning, including the acquisition
of fears.
Behaviourally-minded psychologists focus on the circumstances
under which an anxious person linked a particular situation with an
unpleasant outcome, thereby coming to fear that situation. An example
might be someone with social phobia who was left tongue-tied in a tuto-
rial or laughed at when giving a presentation, and who therefore now
associates these situations with public humiliation.