Abnormal Psychology - Final Exam

Psychosis

• Significant loss of contact with reality

• Hallmark of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia - Prevalence

• Lifetime: 1%

• Male

• Onset: ages 18-30

Delusions

• Erroneous belief

• Disturbance in content of thought

• Fixed and firmly held despite clear contradictory evidence

Hallucinations

• Sensory experience

• Seems real but occurs in absence of any external perceptual stimulus

• Can occur in any sensory modality

Disorganized speech - Schizophrenia

• Failure to make sense

• Despite conforming to semantic and syntactic rules of speech

Disorganized behavior - Schizophrenia

• Impairment of goal-directed activity 

• Occurs in areas of daily functioning

• Catatonia

• Catatonia stupor

Paranoid Schizophrenia

Absurd, illogical organized beliefs

Disorganized Schizophrenia

Disorganized speech & behavior; flat or inappropriate affect

Catatonic Schizophrenia

• Pronounced motor signs that reflect great excitement or stupor

Shizoaffective Disorder

Features of schizophrenia and severe mood disorder

Brief psychotic disorder

Sudden onset of psychotic symptoms or disorganized speech or catatonic behavior

Delirium

State of acute brain failure that lies between normal wakefulness and stupor or coma

Delirium - Clinical

• Has sudden onset and involves fluctuating state of reduced awareness

• Reflects confusion, disturbed concertation, and cognitive dysfunction 

• Can occur at any age, elder and children higher risk 

• May result from drugs, withdrawal, head injury, or infection 

Delirium - Treatments

• Often reversible 

• Most often treated by medications, environmental manipulations, and family support

Dementia - Clinical

• Not rapidly fluctuating condition

• Characterized by a decline from previously attained level of functioning 

• Slow onset and deteriorating course

• Cause by over 50 different disorders

• Most commonly caused by Alzhemier’s 

Parkinson’s - Clinical

• Second most common neurodegenerative disorder

• Characterized by tremors or rigid movements

• Primarily caused by loss of dopamine neurons

• About 75% eventually show signs of dementia before passing 

Huntington’s - Clinical

• Rare degenerative disorders of nervous system 

• Chronic, progressive chorea (Involuntary movements)

• Patients usually develop dementia 

Alzheimer’s

• Progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder

• Usually slow but progressively deteriorating course terminating in delirium and death 

Alzheimer’s - Risk factors

• Age

• Genes

Alzheimer’s - Neuropathology

• Atrophy - Brain Shrinkage with older age

• Plaques - Build-up on Axons; struggles to function 

• Neurofibrillary tangles - myelin sheath deteriorates, causes tangles

Impaired social cognition

Difficulty recognizing emotion in facial expression or speech

Psychosocial treatments - Schizophrenia

• Family therapy 

• Case management

• Social-skills training 

• Cognitive remediation 

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy 

Separation anxiety disorders - children

• Excessive anxiety about separation from major attachment figures such as the Mother and familiar home surroundings

Characteristics of Anxiety disorders in Childhood/Adolescence 

• Unrealistic fears

• Oversensitivity 

• Self-consciousness

• Nightmares

• Chronis Anxiety 

Childhood Depression

• Occurs with high frequency 

• Depressed mood can be replaced by irritability 

Childhood Bipolar disorder

• Extreme mood swings and aggressive, irritable behavior

• Increasingly diagnosed in children and adolescents

Vascular Disease

Series of circumscribed cerebral infarcts cumulatively destroy neuron over expanding brain regions