Psychopathology - Chap 2-3

Midterm 1

Mental processes: Attention

Results in selecting/enhancing certain stimuli including those that may be relative to a disorder, like a spotlight

Ex) Eating disorder patient focusing on “ugly” parts of their body

Mental processes: Perception

Results in registering and identifying a specific stimuli like spiders or a particular facial expression

Ex) Depressed people is less likely to rate neutral/mildly neutral happy faces as happy

Mental processes: Memory

Involves storing, retaining, processing and accessing stored info including what is emotionally relevant to a disorder

Ex) Memory bias in hypochondriacs

Dopamine

Enhancement of neuroplasticity *

Wanting something, desire and motivation to do something -> not about the pleasurable feeling you get when you have something

Ex) Inhalant addictions: “What I just did was horrible, but I can’t wait to do it again”

Pleasure goes down, wanting goes up -> Chasing the first high

Mental contents: Cognitive distortions

Aaron Beck: Dysfunctional, maladaptive thoughts that are not accurate reflections of reality and contribute to/cause psychological disorders

Ex) Woman is convinced she is unlovable and if her boyfriend really knew her, he wouldn’t love her

Recognizing cognitive vulnerabilities can reduce psychological problems

Cognitive distortions: All or nothing thinking

Seeing things in black and white

Ex) you think that if you are not perfect, you are a failure

Cognitive distortions: Overgeneralization

Seeing a single negative event as part of a never-ending pattern of such events

Ex) While having a bad day, you predict that subsequent days will also be bad

Cognitive distortion: Mental filter

Focusing too strongly on negative qualities or events, to the exclusion of other qualities and events

Ex) Although your overall appearance is find, you focus persistently on the bad haircut you recently had

Cognitive distortion: disqualifying the positive

Not recognizing or accepting positive experiences or events, thus emphasizing the negative

Ex) After giving a good presentation, you discount the positive feedback you received and focus only on what you didn’t like about your performance

Cognitive distortions: Jumping to conclusions

Making an unsubstantiated negative interpretation of events

Ex) Although there is no evidence for your inference, you assume that your boss didn’t like your presentation

Cognitive distortions: Personalization

Seeing yourself as the cause of a negative event when in fact you were not actually responsible

Ex) When your parents fight about finances, you think their problems are somehow your fault, despite the fact that their financial trouble weren’t caused by you

Teenagers and the imaginary audience

Believing others are paying attention to/judging you way more than they actually are

Flat affect

Lack of or considerably diminished emotional expression, occurs when someone speaks robotically and shows little facial expression

People with schizophrenia often display inappropriate or flat affect

Inappropriate affect

An expression of emotion that is not appropriate to what a person is saying or the situation

Ex) Laughing at a funeral

Labile affect

Emotional expression changes inappropriately rapid

People with depression may change quickly from sad, to angry, to irritable

Self serving attributional bias

Occurs when people attribute positive events but not negative events to ones own personality traits

Ex) Good grade = “I’m so smart” - Bad grade = “Professors fault”

People with depression rarely display this bias

Externalizing problems

Primary effects on others and/or their environment, usually observable to others

Too little control of emotions and related behaviors like aggression and disruptive behavior

Internalizing problems

Primary effect is on the troubled individual rather than others, less observable

Negative internal experiences like anxiety, social withdrawal, depression

Temperament

The aspects of personality that reflect a persons typical emotional state and emotional reactivity

• Specific types of temperament makes a person especially vulnerable to psych disorders

• Ex) People who are more emotionally reactive are more likely to develop disorders related to high levels of anxiety

• Some disorders are an extreme form of normal variation in temperament → Shyness vs. Social phobia

C. Robert Cloninger: 4 types → Novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependance, persistance

Temperament: Novelty seeking

Searching out novel stimuli and reacting positively to them; high levels can lead to being impulsive, avoiding frustration, and easily getting angry

Associated with dopamine and disorders that involve impulsive or aggressive behaviors

Temperament: Harm avoidance

Reacting very negatively to harm and avoiding it whenever possible

Associated with serotonin and anxiety disorders

Temperament: Reward dependance

Degree to which past behaviors that have led to desired outcomes in the past are repeated

Associated with norepinephrine and substance use disorders

Temperament: Persistence

Making continued efforts in the face of frustration when attempting to accomplish something

Associated with possibly dopamine and ADHD

Social causation

Socioeconomic disadvantages and stress cause psychological disorders → daily stressors of urban life trigger mental illness in those who are vulnerable

Social selection

Those who are mentally ill drift to a lower socioeconomic status because of impairments → Socioeconomic status contributes to disorders and is a consequence of having a disorder

Collectivists

High value on getting along with others, prioritize the goals of the group over the individual

Individualists

Value independence and autonomy, prioritizes goals of the individual over the group

Classification

Provides a means of making comparisons of behavior and psychological functioning to a standard of normalcy

Most common is the DSM

Benefits of diagnosis/classification

• Enables clinicians and researchers to group certain thoughts, feelings, behaviors into “constellations”

• Convey useful information about etiology of the disorder, its course and indications for its treatment

• Indicate needs for attention, treatment, support, benefits

• Some people find relief in learning they are not alone

Diagnostic bias

Systematic error in diagnosis that can cause:

• Disproportionate diagnoses for certain groups based on unrelated factors (sex, race, age)

• May be a stigmatizing label or result in a self-fulfilling prophecy

Reliability & Validity

If a classification system has consistent results over time, its reliable

If the categories characterize what they are meant to be classifying, it is valid

Prognis & Prevalence

Prognis: The likely course and outcome of a disorder

Prevalence: Number of people who have the disorder in a given time period

DSM

Identifies criteria (kinds, number and duration of relevant symptoms) for diagnosing each disorder

It is categorical → either has the disorder or does not, there is no scale (continuum)

It is subjective (uses words like “markedly” and “significant”

Computerized Axial Tomography (CT)

Builds images of the brain slice by slice

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Makes especially sharp images of the brain allowing a precise diagnosis when abnormalities are subtle

Reveal parts of the brain that are larger/smaller than normal

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Introduces a radioactive substance into the bloodstream, while task is performed, active regions of the brain take up more blood & radioactive substance than less active regions

Brighter colors in scan = higher radiation

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Most widely used for measuring brain function

Reflects difference in oxygen levels in images, activated brain regions draw less blood, oxygen used up

Malingering

Intentionally reporting symptoms they don’t actually have or exaggerating ones they do for material gain or to avoid unwanted events

Factitious Disorder

Occurs when someone intentionally falsely reports/induces psychological symptoms to receive attention

Family Environment Scale

Requires family members to answer a set of questions to create a profile of the family environment:

• How its organized, control and conflict, values, emotional expressiveness etc