Assignment task:
We are going to do discussions a little differently in this course. Instead of providing you with a specific prompt, I am going to provide a broader question with some ideas of search terms you may use in a keyword search on a library database. From here, I want you to integrate the findings of at least two peer reviewed journal articles to share interesting/new information with the course about a topic area is of interest to you. In prior courses, I have found this format of discussion to be much more rich in content and hopefully of greater use to you. I do not necessarily care that you write an answer to each of the questions I post--think of these questions more as guides for your thought versus things you must respond to with certainty. I would rather see original content than a templated response to these questions.
Although you will not often hear modern day psychologists talking about defense mechanisms the way Freud once did, one of the main forms of defense we treat in therapy now is avoidance, especially as it relates to anxiety based disorders such as PTSD. For this week's discussion, I want you to look into the literature on "avoidance" and I am intentionally keeping this search vague. You might look into avoidance as it relates to a particular disorder (such as avoidance in PTSD) or how avoidance is treated in psychotherapy. You could consider starting by finding one article that is of interest to you and help your classmates understand the purpose and findings of the study. Then look for a second article that either helps provide more information about the first article OR contradicts it, and put your original findings into the larger context of research.
Keyword searches you will use will probably look something like "avoidance" paired with something like "PTSD" or "health psychology" or "anxiety," although you may use other keywords you think are more useful.