Fear Extinction

[Blinkyrocket]

Apparently new research for anxiety and panic and obviously phobias is focused on fear extinction, you expose yourself to whatever your fear is (even fear of panic itself I assume) and then they administrate something to counteract NMDA receptors or some other glutamate related receptors that are involved in attaching fearful emotion to memories and therefore precipitating avoidance behavior and anticipatory anxiety. Before, research was mainly focused on anxiolytic drugs for unconditioned fear, basically acute fear, but now research is focused on achieving remission of already conditioned fear (the kind you avoid and anticipate and worry about). So, hopefully, the next few decades are marked by significantly increased understanding of chronic anxiety and better treatment. Cuz right now it just seems that the "treatment" is a bunch of short term fixes that only mask symptoms instead of truly eliminating the fear associated with them.

I'm not sure if this is the right section for this post.

[uru]

Got a link?

[Blinkyrocket]

Probably can find it by using google scholar and searching glutamate anxiety disorder. But, I can't post links yet. Glutamate is probably the "next big thing" in terms of normal anxiolytics and therapies targeted at relieving fear attached to specific memories. That is, if the pre clinical trials are successful and whatnot. One specific thing I remember was DCS which I think stood for D-Cycloserine. I need to find it again. D-Cycloserine greatly improves fear extinction but doesn't prevent relapse, so it might not be the best but it's at least a good example of a good idea that could be facilitated on.

---------- Post added at 18:51 ---------- Previous post was at 18:42 ----------

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091305711001201

Finally found it. And turns out I can post links now.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Fear Extinction is an old concept, it originates from Pavlovian Extinction so you can tell how old it is. There are various forms of Exposure Therapy and the one we use in the UK is Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) which uses the concept of Extinction, as originated from Pavlov, in it's exposure hierarchy process.

The difference in what you are describing is how they are finding they can administer certain things to control certain glutamate receptors. There is some on Wiki about it if you look up exposure therapy.

There are various new meds already in development that add glutamate into the mix. Glutamate is the largest neurotransmitter and is countered by GABA (the one the Benzo's head for). It will be interesting to see what comes out of it and especially for us OCDers because there is already some clinical proof in the use of NAC to dial down a specific area of glutamate which has been found very successful in treating the skin picking/hair pulling forms associated with OCD.

[uru]

I think it would work for certifying fears (phobias)

It wouldn't work for me, or for health anxiety folk...I don't think. Exposure to lots of googled sites doesn't help them at all.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think it would work for certifying fears (phobias)

It wouldn't work for me, or for health anxiety folk...I don't think. Exposure to lots of googled sites doesn't help them at all.

It's actually the recommended treatment for OCD per NICE. There are HA people on here doing it. Therapists tend to remove the triggers at first and work through a structure as seen in ERP but they have to be exposed to things that challenge their beliefs. If you come out of ERP and haven't tackled what is underpinning that Google issue, you would continue with the original fear or avoidance based on the fear. The latter is just as damaging since the same triggers are all over TV, on billboards, in papers & mags, conversation whether direct or indirect, etc.