Long Test

TRUE/FALSE: Psychological disorders remain the most stigmatized of conditions in the 21st century

True

Felicia feels stressed with her difficulty in paying attention in class. What characteristic defines her psychological disorder?

Personal distress

Bob is experiencing poor work performance after the death of his grandmother. What characteristic defines his psychological disorder?

Disability and dysfunction

The repetitive rituals performed by people with obsessive-compulsive disorder can be described by what characteristic of psychological disorders?

Violation of social norms

What is an advantage of the DSM-5 definition of psychological disorder?

It includes many components, none of which alone can account for psychological disorder

T/F: Benjamin Rush is credited with beginning moral treatment in the United States

No, he is considered the father of American psychiatry

What did Benjamin Rush suggest about the etiology of psychological disorder?

psychological disorder was caused by an excess of blood in the brain, for which his treatment was to draw great quantities of blood

What is the difference between Pinel and Pussin?

Pinel was a primary figure in the movement for more humane treatment of people with psychological disorders and Pussin was the one who released people from chains.

How did Dorothea Dix influence the movement for moral treatment?

She fought for hospitals to be created to care for people with psychological disorders and campaigned.

What trend related to mental hospitals emerge in the late 1960s

Deinstitutionalization (release from the hospital) of a large number of people with psychological disorders

According to the research by Pescosolido and colleagues (2010), how did public attitudes toward psychological disorders change between 1996 and 2006?

Public knowledge about the neurobiological causes increased, but the level of stigma remained the same.

Hippocrates believed that mental health was dependent on the delicate balance of four humors. A preponderance of ‘black bile’ was thought to cause

Melancholia

What was the historical significance of the discovery of the microorganism that causes syphilis?

It established a causal link between a biological infection, brain damage, and psychopathology.

According to Thorndike’s Law of Effect, behavior is more likely to be repeated if it is

followed by consequences that are satisfying to the organism

The conceptual framework or approach that is a set of basic assumptions is

a paradigm

What changes has the genetic paradigm brought about

almost all behavior is heritable to some degree and despite this, genes don’t operate in isolation from the environment

The current way to think about genes in the environment is called

nature via nurture

The process by which proteins switch other genes on and off is

gene expression

T/F: One gene contributes to vulnerability.

False, Psychopathology is polygenic, meaning that several genes are the essence of genetic vulnerability.

The two points about heritability are

1. Heritability estimates range from 0.0 to 1.0. The higher the number, the greater the heritability.

2. Heritability is relevant only for a large population of people, not a particular individual

T/F: Heritability is relevant only for a large population of people, not a particular individual

True

Turkheimer and colleagues influenced research about genetics by showing how

genes and environment may interact to influence IQ. Being in an impoverished environment may have deleterious effects on IQ.

Current molecular genetics research has focused on

identifying people in the sequence of their genes and in the structure of their genes

SNPs tell us about the _________ of genes, and CNVs tell us about the _________ of genes.

sequence, structure

According to the research by Turkheimer and colleagues (2003) on IQ and socioeconomic status (SES):

In high-SES families, variability in IQ is more attributable to genes than to environment.

The study of how environmental influences can alter gene expression without changing the DNA sequence is known as

Epigenetics

Which neurotransmitter communicates with the sympathetic nervous system to produce states of high arousal and is often implicated in anxiety disorders

norepinephrine

What subcortical brain structure is considered a key area for psychopathology research due to its role in processing emotionally salient stimuli

amygdala

The following paradigm believes that psychological disorders are linked to aberrant processes in the brain

neuroscience paradigm

The neuroscience paradigm would explain dementia as

traced to impairments in structures of the brain

These are chemicals that allow neurons to send a signal across the synapse to another neuron

Neurotransmitters

The parts of a neuron include

the cell body, dendrites, axons, and terminal buttons

The gap between the terminal endings of the sending axon and the cell membrane of the receiving neuron is the

synapse

The following neurotransmitters have been implicated in psychopathology

dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)

What does research say about the ways in which NTs contribute to psychopathology

• too much or too little of a neurotransmitter

• neurotransmitter activity can be influenced by errors in metabolic steps

• neurotransmitter receptors are at fault