Psychiatric Medications Q 7
A 25-year-old male is admitted to a mental health facility because of inappropriate behavior. The client has been hearing voices, responding to imaginary companions, and withdrawing to his room for several days at a time. Nurse Monette understands that the withdrawal is a defense against the client’s fear of:
A. Phobia
B. Powerlessness
C. Punishment
D. Rejection
Correct Answer: D. Rejection
An aloof, detached, withdrawn posture is a means of protecting the self by withdrawing and maintaining a safe, emotional distance. When confronted by stressful events, people sometimes abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier in development. Anna Freud called this defense mechanism regression, suggesting that people act out behaviors from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are fixated. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental stage might cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news.
Option A: Patients with a specific phobia experience high levels of anxiety and panic attacks along with excessive and unreasonable fear due to either exposure or anticipation of exposure to a feared stimulus. As a result, these patients will try to avoid the anxiety-provoking stimulus to any extent possible. The fear or anxiety experienced is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation. The fear or anxiety experienced is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation.
Option B: The opposite of power is powerlessness. Powerlessness refers to the expectancy that people’s behaviors cannot determine the outcomes or reinforcements that they seek. Powerlessness may further be explained as the lack of strength or the absence of power. People experiencing powerlessness may feel out of control and have no solution to regain control. Subsequent to feeling out of control comes the lack of capability to be in command of most aspects of one’s life. Powerlessness also can be considered as the absence of complete authority or status to affect how others will act toward others. It is viewed by some that, when confronting powerlessness, individuals may be able to affect or change the negative behaviors (e.g., compulsions and addictions) of either themselves or others.
Option C: Punishment is a term used in operant conditioning to refer to any change that occurs after a behavior that reduces the likelihood that that behavior will occur again in the future. While positive and negative reinforcements are used to increase behaviors, punishment is focused on reducing or eliminating unwanted behaviors.