AP Psychology Unit 5: Mental & Physical Health

Health psychology

Interdisciplinary branch of psychology that combines medicine, psychology, public health, and sociology.

Stress

Physiological and psychological response to challenges or demands that exceed an individual’s coping abilities. A response to perceived threats (something that we can’t cope with).

• Headaches

Hypertension

High blood pressure, where blood is pushed with force against the artery walls causing damage to the heart, brain, and other vital organs.

Immune suppression

A weakened or compromised immune system.

Stressors

Any event, situation, or external stimuli perceived as challenging or threatening leads to a stress response in the body.

• School

Eustress

Positive stress

Manageable stress so it’s perceived as positive.

Distress

Negative stress.

Overwhelming and exceeds an individual’s ability to cope.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Abuse, neglect, and household challenges that lead to chronic stress.

Individuals are more likely. to develop illnesses in adulthood if they experienced ACEs. They won’t be able to handle stress as well.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

The body’s physiological response to stressors. It helps explain how individuals respond to various stressors.

Alarm reaction phase

The body perceives a stressor and activates the fight, flight, or freeze response.

High physiological level of stress.

Sympathetic system releases stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline), increased heart rate & energy, heightened senses.

Resistance phase

The body attempts to adapt and cope with the stressor. Hormone levels stabilize to sustain the heightened state of readiness, allowing individuals to continue functioning despite the stressor’s presence.

Fight-flight-freeze response

Fight: defence and act

Flight: Leaving, escaping

Freeze: Stay

Exhaustion phase

If stress continues without relief or adaptation, the exhaustion phase occurs. Physiological resources become depleted, and the body’s ability to cope diminishes. Increased vulnerability to illness and impaired cognitive functioning.

Tend-and-befriend theory

In response to stressors, individuals, especially women, are biologically predisposed to seek social connections and support (befriending) and nurture others (tending).

Coping with stress: Problem-focused coping

Solution

Involves actively managing or altering stressful situations through direct actions or problem-solving strategies. Aims to change the stressful circumstances or one’s response to them, thereby reducing the impact of stressors.

Coping with stress: Emotion-focused coping

Deep breathing, meditation, and medication.

Involves regulating emotional responses to stressors, rather than altering the stressors themselves.

Positive psychology

Study of human strengths and well-being, aiming to understand and promote factors that allow individuals and communities to thrive.

Fosters positive emotions, recognizing positive aspects of life and the role of others.

Aims to achieve psychological health.

Well-being

State of positive, mental, emotional, and social health.

Self-acceptance is key.

Resilience

Capacity to adapt successfully and maintain wellbeing in the face of adversity.

Positive Subjective Experiences

The positive but private feelings and thoughts people have about themselves and the events in their lives.

Gratitude

Involves recognizing and appreciating the positive aspects of life and the kindness of others. Increases subjective well-being.

Signature Strengths/Virtues

Six core virtues that increase positive objective experience.

Wisdom

Cognitive strengths that involve acquiring and using knowledge.

Creativity, curiosity, judgment, perspective, and love of learning.

Courage

Emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish in the face of opposition/fear.

Humanity

Interpersonal/social strengths that involve tending and befriending others.

Justice

Civic strengths that underlie a healthy community life.

Temperance

Strengths that protect against excess.

Transcendence

Strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning.

Posttraumatic growth

The positive psychological change is experienced as a result of struggling with highly challenging life circumstances. It involves finding new meaning, personal strength, and appreciation for life following adversity.

Dysfunction

The extent to which a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interfere with their ability to perform daily activities.

Distress

Subjective experience of emotional or psychological pain.

Deviation from norms

Behaviours, thoughts, or feelings that significantly differ from what is considered typical or acceptable within a society or culture.

Classifying or Diagnosing Disorders: Cultural/social norms

Every culture might react differently to symptoms of disorders.

Classifying or Diagnosing Disorders: Stigma

Judgment and labels that surround psychological disorders and their connotations.

Classifying or Diagnosing Disorders: Racism

The biases that clinical psychologists have when looking at or examining a patient.

Classifying or Diagnosing Disorders: Sexism

Prejudice around gender

Classifying or Diagnosing Disorders: Ageism

Bias based on age

Classifying or Diagnosing Disorders: Discrimination

After diagnosis, a person might experience social stigma, resulting in more symptoms (e.g., anxiety).

Culture-bound disorder

A mental health condition that is unique to a specific ethnic group.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)

A comprehensive classification system published by the APA that provides standardized criteria for diagnosing mental disorders.

International Classification of Mental Disorders (ICD)

Global health information standard maintained by the WHO. It includes a section on mental and behavioral disorders, providing diagnostic criteria and codes for mental health conditions.

Eclectic

A therapeutic strategy that combines elements from various psychosocial theories and techniques to address an individual’s specific needs.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Behavioral

• Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.

• Views psychological disorders as maladaptive behaviours learned through conditioning.

• Maladaptive learned associations between or among responses to stimuli.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Psychodynamic

• Unconscious, childhood

• Views psychological disorders as stemming from unconscious conflicts, childhood experiences, and represented emotions.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Humanistic

• Emphasize personal growth, self-actualization, and the achievements of one’s potential. Psychological disorders are viewed as barriers to personal growth caused by conditions that thwart self-actualization.

• Support to reach full potential, unconditional positive regard, and self-actualization tendency.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Cognitive

• Thinking, remembering, perceiving

• Views psychological disorders as resulting from faulty or distorted thinking patterns.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Evolutionary

• Natural selection, adaptation, survival, and reproductive success.

• Explains psychological disorders in terms of adaptive functions that have become maladaptive in modern environments.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Sociocultural

• Culture, family, society, friends, media.

• Emphasizes the role of social and cultural influences on psychological disorders.

Perspectives that define psych disorders: Biological

• Genetics, brain chemistry, hormones.

• Attributes psychological disorders to biological factors such as genetics, neurochemical imbalances, and brain abnormalities.

Biopsychosocial Model

Posits that psychological disorders arise from a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. This model rejects the idea that mental disorders can be understood solely through one perspective, emphasizing the need to consider multiple dimensions of a person’s life and health.

Biopsychosocial Model: Biological factors

• Genetic predispositions

• Neurochemical imbalances

• Brain abnormalities

• Hormones

• Germs

• Other physiological factors that can affect mental health.

Biopsychosocial Model: Psychological factors

• Cognitive patterns

• Emotional responses

• Personality traits

• Coping mechanism

• Influence how individuals perceive and react to stressors

Biopsychosocial Model: Sociocultural factors

• Environmental influences such as family dynamics, social support, cultural norms, socioeconomic status, and life events that impact mental health.

Diathesis-Stress Model

Suggests that psychological disorders develop due to a combination of predispositions (diathesis) and environmental stressors. A diathesis can be genetic, biological, or psychological, and it predisposes an individual to a disorder, but the disorder manifests only when significant stress triggers it.

Diathesis (Diathesis-Stress Model)

An underlying vulnerability or predisposition that can be genetic, biological, or psychological in nature.

Stress ( Diathesis-Stress Model)

Environmental factors or life events can trigger the onset of a disorder when combined with the diathesis.

Neurodevelopmental disorders

A group of disorders occurring during the developmental period. These disorders involve central nervous system abnormalities (usually in the brain) that start in childhood and alter thinking and behaviour.

Neurodevelopmental disorders: Symptoms

• Limitations in learning

• Control of executive functions

• Social skills

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Significant and consistent pattern of inattentive and impulsive behavior.

Inattention:

• Difficulty with organization and attention to detail

• Struggles in or avoids tasks that require sustained mental effort

• Quickly loses focus and is easily sidetracked

Hyperactivity and impulsivity:

• Difficulty or discomfort in being still for extended periods of time

• Often unable to play or engage in leisure activities quietly

• Excessive talking or blurting

• Difficulty waiting for a turn

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Significant problems with social communication and social interaction across many different social situations; a small number of interests and activities.

• Social communication difficulties

• Repetitive and restricted patterns of behavior, interests, or activities

Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Possible Causes

Environmental factors: Teratogens, infections, and stress can affect brain development. Exposure to lead.

Physiological factors: Abnormal brain development, differences in brain structure, functions, and connectivity.

Genetic factors: Genes and genetic mutations.

Schizophrenia

A psychotic disorder characterized by disturbances in thinking (cognition), emotional responsiveness, and behavior, with an age of onset typically between the late teens and mid-30s.

Acute

Sudden onset of symptoms, short duration, great intensity.

Chronic

Symptoms that persist or progress over a long period of time and are resistant to cure.

Positive Symptoms

Added

Negative Symptoms

Stops, taken out

Delusions

False beliefs are positive symptoms

Delusions of persecution

Belief that one is going to be harmed, harassed, and so forth by an individual, organization, or group.

Delusions of grandeur

When an individual believes that they have exceptional abilities, wealth, or fame.

Hallucinations

False perceptions that are positive symptoms and may involve one or more of the senses.

• Vivid and clear, full force and impact of normal perceptions

• Auditory is the most common

Disorganized thinking or speech

Positive symptoms may manifest in ways such as word salad.

Word salad

Combining words in nonsensical ways.

Disorganized motor behavior

Range of abnormal movements and behaviors, including agitation, catatonia, and unpredictable or inappropriate actions.

Catatonia

Disordered movement typical to certain mental health disorders.

Catatonic excitement

Periods of extreme restlessness and excessive and apparently purposeless motor activity.

Catatonic stupor

A state of significant decreased reactivity to environmental stimuli and events, and reduced spontaneous movement.

Flat Affect

Reductions in the expression of emotions in the face, eye contact, and movements of the hand, head, and face that normally give emotional emphasis to speech.

Schizophrenia: Possible causes

Biological: Genetics, prenatal virus exposure, age of father at conception, dopamine hypothesis, brain structure (brain tissue, thalamus), brain function (thalamus, amygdala, frontal lobe).

Psychological: Stressful event (ACEs), diathesis-stress model.

Sociological: Low socioeconomic status, social adversity.

Dopamine hypothesis (Schizophrenia)

Increased dopamine levels can create some of the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Depressive disorders

They are characterized by the presence of a sad, empty, or irritable mood along with physical and cognitive changes that affect a person’s ability to function.

Depressive disorders: Symptoms

Sad, empty, or irritable mood.

Major depressive disorder

Persistent and pervasive low mood, needs to last at least 2 weeks with 5 of the symptoms present, including at least a sad mood or anhedonia.

Symptoms: Sad mood, loss of pleasure in activities (anhedonia), feelings of worthlessness, sleeping difficulties, lack of motivation, suicidal ideation.

Persistent depressive disorder

Fewer and less severe symptoms compared to major depressive disorder, but the symptoms for persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia) must be present for at least 2 years.

Chronic form of depression.

Depressive Disorders: Possible causes

Biological: neuroticism

Genetic: First-degree family member

Behavioral: Learned helplessness (the idea that we cannot control life’s outcomes)

Social: ACEs

Cultural: Gender, race

Cognitive: Maladaptive thoughts, cognitive triad

Bipolar disorders

Mental health conditions are characterized. by periodic, intense, emotional states that affect a person’s mood, energy, and ability to function.

Bipolar depression

Gloomy, withdrawn, inability to make decisions, tired, slowness of thoughts, and appetite changes.

Bipolar mania

Elation, euphoria, desire for action, hyperactivity, multiple ideas, and impulsive behavior.

Bipolar cycling

Experiencing periods of depression and mania in alternating periods that can last various amounts of time.

Bipolar I disorder

It is characterized by the occurrence of at least one manic episode, which may be preceded or followed by hypomanic or depressive episodes. The manic episodes in Bipolar I disorder are often severe and can significantly impair daily functioning or require hospitalization to prevent harm.

Bipolar II disorder

Involves a pattern of depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes but does not include the full-blown manic episodes typical of Bipolar I disorder. Hypomanic episodes are less severe than manic episodes and do not cause significant impairment in social or occupational functioning.

Bipolar Disorders: Possible causes

Biological: Lithium agonist for serotonin, neuroimbalances

Genetic: Heredity -80% to 90% have a relative with Bipolar disorder or depression. Shares the same genetic component as schizophrenia

Social: Childhood adversity

Cultural: Norms

Behavioral: Behavior and coping

Cognitive: Maladaptive thinking and cognitive distortions

Anxiety disorders

They are characterized by excessive and persistent worry, fear, or apprehension that interferes with daily functioning.

Anxiety Disorders: Symptoms

Symptoms can vary widely depending on the specific type of disorder.

Both physiological and psychological.

Specific phobia

Involves an intense, irrational fear of a specific object or situation that is typically disproportional to the actual threat.

Intense fear, avoidance behavior, physical symptoms, distress.

Acrophobia

Fear of heights

Arachnophobia

Fear of spiders

Agoraphobia

Characterized by an intense fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or help might not be available in the event of a panic attack or other incapacitating symptoms.

Panic disorder

Involves the experience of panic attacks (unanticipated and overwhelming biological, cognitive, and emotional experiences of fear/anxiety).

Panic attacks

Recurrent and unexpected.

Characterized by symptoms such as palpitations, sweating, shaking, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, dizziness, or dissociation/derealization.

Ataque de nervios

Culturally specific syndrome (Latin American and Caribbean communities) characterized by the sudden onset of intense emotional distress and physical symptoms, often in response to a stressful or traumatic event. It has unique cultural and contextual aspects.