Case Study: Anxiety

Instructions: Read the following case study about a woman, Allison, who is suffering from anxiety. After you have read the case study, diagnose Allison and present some methods of treatment by answering the questions. Presenting Complaint Allison, a 33-year-old white woman, knew that it was finally time for her to seek psychological services. She had always been an anxious person and, for years, had managed to keep it under control. But, this time she felt as though she was fighting a losing battle and worried that it was going to result in her being fired from her job. Allison worked as a flight attendant for a major airline and loved interacting with the passengers. She was particularly proud of her extensive knowledge of aircraft safety regulations and had confidence in her ability to properly manage a crisis situation should it arise. However, over the past year she had missed a significant amount of work because of her extreme anxiety about flying and staying in hotels in different cities. She had wanted to believe that her worry about her career was justified, but she knew deep down that she worried about everything, not just work. She worried about other things that most people would see as trivial: whether she would be caught in the rain without an umbrella, if she was going to remember to pay her bills on time, or if the bus she was riding would break down and leave her stranded. Allison recalled that she noticed a change in her thinking after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She repeatedly thought, “That could have been me in that plane. What would I have done? This is just one more sign that the world has become a very dangerous place.” Allison finds that she can’t relax on her days off because she spends the entire time worrying about taking her next flight. “I worry all the time—about everything. She worries that she will miss the bus to the airport and be late for work. She worried that she will have a panic attack on the