Psychological Disorders Chapter

Chapter 14 Mazurek

Psychological Disorder

Any pattern of behavior, thinking, or emotional function that causes someone significant distress, poses a danger to themselves or others, impairs their ability to function in daily life, or involves a combination of these factors.

Subclinical

An individual that does not meet clinical criteria but is very close.

Systematic Desensitization

behavior therapy that gradually reduces fear or anxiety by pairing relaxation techniques with exposure to a feared object or situation

Psychopathology

The scientific study of psychological disorders

Situational Context

The social or environmental setting of a person’s behavior.

Subjective discomfort

Emotional distress or emotional pain

Maladaptive/Dysfunctional

Anything that does not allow a person to function within or adapt to the stresses and everyday demands of life

Insanity

An informal term for severe mental instability, often used legally to describe a condition where someone can’t understand their actions or distinguish right from wrong. Can be used to argue that someone should not be held criminally liable for their reactions.

The Biological Model

Way of understanding psychological disorders as illnesses of the brain and body, rather than the result of personal weakness or purely life experiences.

Cognitive Psychologists (psychological disorders)

In the context of psychological disorders, focus on how maladaptive thinking patterns contribute to the development and maintenance of mental illness.

Behaviorism (Psychological disorders)

In the context of psychological disorders, explains mental illness as the result of learned behaviors rather than internal thoughts or biological defects.

Cognitive Perspective (psychological disorders)

Explains psychological disorders as stemming from maladaptive or distorted patterns of thinking that influence emotions and behaviors—the perspective

Sociocultural Perspective (psychological disorders)

In psychopathology, perspective in which disordered thinking and behavior is seen as the product of learning and shaping within the context of the family.

Cultural Relativity

The need to consider the unique characteristics of the culture in which behavior takes place.

Cultural syndromes

Sets of particular symptoms of distress found in particular cultures, which may or may not be recognized as an illness within the culture.

biopsychosocial model

Perspective in which both mental health and psychopathology are seen as the result of the combines and interacting forces of biological, psychological, social, and cultural influences.

HiTOP

A dimensional, hierarchical model of psychopathology that organizes mental disorders based on shared symptoms and underlying traits rather than discrete categories.

Comorbidity

The presence of more than one illness or disorder in an individual at the same time.

Anhedonia

Reduced ability or inability to experience pleasure from activities that are normally enjoyable.

Affect

In Psychology, a term indicating “emotion” or “mood”

Mood disorders

Disorders in which the primary symptom is a prevalent and persistent disturbance of emotion.

Major Depressive Disorder

Severe depression that comes on suddenly and seems to have no external cause, or is too severe for current circumstances.

Bipolar Disorder

Periods of mood that may range from normal to manic, with or without episodes of depression (one type) or spans of normal mood interspersed with episodes of major depression and episodes of hypomania (another type)

Manic

Having the quality of or resulting from mania, excessive excitement, energy, overactivity, and elation or irritability, often with impaired judgement.

Bipolar-1 disorder.

Bipolar disorder marked by periods of mood that range from normal to manic (with or without episodes of depression).

Hypomania

Milder form of mani characterized by a persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and increased energy but WITHOUT severe impairment of psychosis.

Bipolar 2 disorder

Spans of normal mood interspersed with episodes of major depression and episodes of hypomania.

Anxiety

The anticipation of some future threat, often associated with worry, vigilance, and muscle tension.

Anxiety Disorders

Class of disorders in which the primary symptom is persistent and disproportionate or unrealistic anxiety, often characterized by excessive apprehension, worry, or fear.

Free-floating anxiety

Anxiety that is unrelated to any specific and known cause.

Phobia

An irrational, persistent fear of an object, situation, or social activity.

Social anxiety disorder

Fear of interacting with others or being in social situations that might lead to a negative evaluation AKA (… phobia)

Specific phobia

Fear of objects or specific situations or events.

Claustrophobia

Fear of being in a small, enclosed space.

Acrophobia

Fear of heights.

Agoraphobia

Fear of being in a palce or situation form which escape is difficult or impossible.

Panic Attack

Sudden onset of intense panic in which multiple physical symptoms of stress occur, often with feelings that one is dying.

Panic Disorder

Disorder in which panic attacks occur more than once or repeatedly and cause persistent worry or changes in behavior.

Generalized anxiety disorder

Disorder in which a person has excessive anxiety and worry about multiple things, accompanied by physical and cognitive symptoms of stress, which lasts 6 months or more.

Magnification

The tendency to interpret situation as far more dangerous, harmful, or important than they actually are.

All-or-nothing thinking

The tendency to believe that one’s performance must be perfect or the result will be a total failure.

Overgeneralization

Distortion of thinking in which a person draws sweeping conclusions based on only one incident or event and applies those conclusions to events that are unrelated to the original.

Minimization

The tendency to give little or no importance to one’s successes or positive events and traits.

Dissociative amnesia

Trauma-related disorder in which a person is unable to recall important personal information, usually about a stressful or traumatic event, and the memory loss cannot be explained by ordinary forgetting or a medical condition.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID)

Disorder occurring when an individual seems to experience two or more distinct personalities.

Fugues

Episodes in which a person suddenly travels away from home and experience memory loss for their past, including confusion about identity.

Anorexia Nervosa

A condition in which a person reduced eating to the point that their body weight is significantly low, or less than minimally expected.

Bulimia nervosa

A condition in which a person develops a cycle of “bingeing,” or overeating enormous amounts of food at one sitting, and then uses unhealthy methods to avoid weight gain.

Binge Eating disorder

A condition in which a person overeats, or binges, on enormous amounts of food at one sitting, but unlike bulimia nervosa, the individual does not then purge or use other unhealthy methods to avoid weight gain.

Sexual dysfunction

a problem in sexual functioning.

Personality Disorder

Disorders in which a person adopts a persistent, rigid, and maladaptive pattern of behavior that interferes with normal social interactions.

Paranoid personality disorder

Personality disorder in which a person exhibits pervasive and widespread distrust and suspiciousness of others.

Antisocial personality disorder

Disorder in which a person uses other people without worrying about their rights or feelings and often behaves in an impulsive or reckless manner without regard for the consequences of that behavior.

Borderline personality disorder

Maladaptive personality pattern in which the person is moody, is unstable, lacks a clear sense of identity, and often clings to others with a pattern of self-destructiveness, chronic loneliness, and disruptive anger in close relationships.

Dependent Personality disorder

Personality disorder in which the person is clingy, submissive, or fearful of separation; requires constant reassurance; feels helpless when alone'; and has others assume responsibility for most areas of life.

Schizotypal

Adjective that describes a pattern of thinking, perception, and behavior that resembles milder or subclinical features of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia

A psychotic disorder in which the person experiences disordered thinking, bizarre behavior, hallucination, and inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Delusions

False beliefs help by a person who refuses to accept evidence of their falseness.

Psychotic

Refers to an individual’s inability to separate what is real and what is fantasy.

Hallucinations

False sensory perceptions, such as hearing voices that do not really exist.

Flat Affect

A lack of emotional responsiveness .

Catatonia

Disturbed behavior ranging from statue like immobility to bursts of energetic, frantic, movement and talking.

Delusions of persecution

False beliefs that a person is being targeted, harmed, harassed, watched, or conspired against, despite no evidence to support the belief.

Delusions of reference

False belifs that neutral or unrelated events are specifically directed at oneself.

Delusions of influence

False beliefs that ones thoughts, feelings, or actions, are being controlled, manipulated, or caused by an external force like the government or something supernatural.

Delusions of grandeur

False beliefs that a person has exceptional importance, power, knowledge, or abilities. Kind of like they are the Hero.

Positive Symptoms

Symptoms of schizophrenia that are excesses of behavior or occur in addition to normal behavior; hallucinations, delusions, and distorted thinking.

Negative Symptoms

Symptoms of schizophrenia that are less than normal behavior or an absence of normal behavior, such as poor attention, flat affect, and poor speech production.

Stress-Vulnerability model

Explanation of disorder that assumes a biological sensitivity, or vulnerability, to a certain disorder will result in the development of that disorder under the right conditions of environmental or emotional stress.