Abnormal Psychology III: Finals MA

Anxiety

A negative mood state characterized by bodily symptoms of physical tension and by apprehension about the future: sometimes it is good for us, at least in moderate amounts.

Shadow of Intelligence

The gnawing feeling that things could go wrong and we had better be prepared for them

Panic Attack

Is a sudden rush of intense fear or anxiety that comes on from out of the blue for no apparent reason or in situations where you did from out of the blue for no apparent reason or in situations where you did not expect it to occur. 

Expected Panic Attacks

 If you know you are afraid of high places or of driving over long bridges, you might have a panic attack in these situations but not anywhere else

Unexpected Panic Attacks

If you don’t have a clue when or where the next attack will occur.

Limbic System

The area of the brain most often associated with anxiety is the ___________

Behavioral Inhibition System

Is activated by signals from the brain stem of unexpected events, such as major changes in body functioning that might signal danger.

Fight/Flight System (FFS)

When stimulated in animals, this circuit produces an immediate alarm-and-escape response that looks very much like panic in humans

Anxiety Sensitivity

the general tendency to respond fearfully to anxiety symptoms, which appears to be an important personality trait that determines who will and who will not experience prob lems with anxiety under certain stressful conditions 

1. Generalized Biological Vulnerability

2. Generalized Psychological Vulnerability

3. Specific Psychological Vulnerability

Components of the Triple Vulnerability Theory

Generalized Biological Vulnerability

a tendency to be uptight or high-strung might be inherited.

Generalized Psychological Vulnerability

You might also grow up believing the world is dangerous and out of control and you might not be able to cope when things go wrong based on your early experiences

Specific Psychological Vulnerability

in which you learn from early experience, such as being taught by your parents, that some situations or objects are fraught with danger

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

It is characterized by muscle tension, mental agitation, susceptibility to fatigue, some irritability, and difficulty sleeping. People with ________ mostly worry about minor, everyday life events, a characteristic that distinguishes _______ from other anxiety disorders.

1. Restlessness

2. Easily Fatigued

3. Difficulty Concentrating

4. Irritability

5. Muscle Tension

6. Sleep Disturbance

Generalized Anxiety Disorder requires excessive anxiety and worry that is difficult to control, occurring more days than not for at least 6 months about a number of events or activities associated with at least 3 of the following symptoms:

1. Natural Environment

2. Animals

3. Mutilation/Medical Treatment

4. Situations

Four Major Specific Phobia Categories

Panic Disorder

Individuals experience severe, unexpected panic attacks; they may think they’re dying or otherwise losing control. The person must think that each attack is a sign of impending death or incapacitation. 

1. Palpitations

2. Sweating

3. Trembling or Shaking

4. Sensations of Shortness of Breath

5. Feelings of Choking

6. Chest pain or discomfort

7. Nausea or abdominal distress

8. Feeling diizzy, unsteady , light-headed or faint

9. Chills or Heat Sensations

10. Derealization or Depersonalization

11. Fear of Losing Control

12. Fear of Dying

13. Paresthesias: Numbness or Tingling

Panic Disorders require recurrent panic attacks as characterized by at least 4 of the following symptoms

Agoraphobia

is fear and avoidance of situations in which a person feels unsafe or unable to escape in the event of a developing panic, panic-like symptoms, or other physical symptoms, such as loss of bladder control.

Karl Westphal

He coined Agoraphobia which originates from the Greek word agora, meaning fear of the marketplace

Interoceptive Avoidance

or avoidance of internal physical sensations. These behaviors involve removing oneself from situations or activities that might produce the physiological arousal that somehow resembles the beginnings of a panic attack. 

Ataques de nervios

The symptoms of an ataque seem quite similar to those of a panic attack, although such manifestations as shouting uncontrollably or bursting into tears may be associated more often with ataque than with panic.

Nocturnal Panic

Change in stages of sleep to slow wave sleep produces physical sensations of “letting go” that are frightening to an individual with panic disorder

Sleep Apnea

an interruption of breathing during sleep that may feel like suffocation

Sleep Terrors

Often, children awaken imagining that something is chasing them around the room. It is common for them to scream and get out of bed as if something were after them. However, they do not wake up and have no memory of the event in the morning.

Isolated Sleep Paralysis

Occurs during the transitional state between sleep and waking, when a person is either falling asleep or waking up. During this period, the individual is unable to move and experiences a surge of terror that resembles a panic attack; occasionally, there are also vivid hallucinations

Panic Control Treatment

Concentrates on exposing patients with panic disorder to the cluster of interoceptive (physical) sensations that remind them of their panic attacks.

Specific Phobia

It is an irrational fear of a specific object or situation that markedly interferes with an individual’s ability to function.

1. Specific Fear

2. Fear or Anxiety provoked by Exposure

3. Avoidance

Requires that for at least 6 months, a person has experienced marked fear, anxiety or avoidance as charcterized by the following 3 symptoms:

Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia

A strong vasovagal response to blood, injury, or the possibility of an injection, all of which cause a drop in blood pressure and a tendency to faint.

Situational Phobia

 Phobias characterized by fear of public transportation or enclosed places. The main difference between situational phobia and panic disorder is that people with situational phobia never experience panic attacks outside the context of their phobic object or situation.

Natural Environment Phobia

Fears of situations or events occurring in nature. The major examples are heights, storms, and water.

Animal Phobia

Fears of animals and insects

Pa-Leng

Sometimes frigo phobia or fear of the cold. They ruminate over loss of body heat and may wear several layers of clothing even on a hot day

Information Transmission

Sometimes being just warned repeatedly about a potential danger is sufficient for someone to develop a phobia

Separation Anxiety

Is characterized by children’s unrealistic and persistent worry that something will happen to their parents or other important people in their life or that something will happen to the children themselves that will separate them from their parents

Social Anxiety Disorder or Social Phobia

more than exaggerated shyness. Characterized by excessive worry in social situations

Performance Anxiety

Which is a subtype of SAD, usually have no difficulty with social interaction, but when they must do something specific in front of people, anxiety takes over and they focus on the possibility that they will embarrass themselves.

Taijin Kyofusho

Japanese people with this form of SAD strongly fear that some aspect of their personal presentation (blushing, stuttering, body odor, and so on) will appear reprehensible, causing other people to feel embarrassed. 

Bashful Bladder or Paruresis

Males with this problem must wait until a stall is available when urinating in a public restroom, a difficult task at times

Olfactory Reference Syndrome

Is preoccupation with a belief that one is embarrassing oneself and offending others with a foul body odor. 

Selective Mutism

Rare childhood disorder characterized by a lack of speech in one or more settings in which speaking is socially expected.

Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

All share a proximal instigating stressful event followed by intense emotional responses. Also, a wider range of emotions—such as rage, horror, guilt, and shame, in addition to fear and anxiety

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Is a complex health condition that can develop in response to a traumatic experience such as a life-threatening or extremely distressing situation that causes a person to feel intense fear, horror or a sense of helplessness. PTSD can cause physical, mental, and emotional problems for a person.

Traumatic Events

The following events are some examples of a traumatic experience that can lead to the development of PTSD

1. Violent Crime

2. War

3. Sexual Abuse

4. Natural Disaster

5. Physical Abuse

6. Experience where a person thought they would be harmed or killed

7. Car Wreck or Airplane Crash

Common Traumatic Events

1. Trouble falling or staying asleep

2. Emotional instability 

3. Inability to concentrate

4. Hyper vigilance

5. Exaggerated startle response

The symptoms should occur for more than a month and they cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Ongoing symptoms of amplified stimulation as indicated by two of the following:

Exposure Therapy

This is used to teach people to have less fear about the memories

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)

While talking about your memories, you'll focus on distractions like eye movements, hand taps, and sounds

Dissociative Flashback Episodes

This is when a person with PTSD experiences the trauma as if it were happening all over again. This is usually caused by a trigger that reminds the person of the original trauma.

Exaggerated Startle Response

Is the response of the mind and body to a sudden, unexpected stimulus, such as being easily frightened by a noise

Hyper Vigilance

Is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an inflated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. For example a person suffering from PTSD will constantly monitoring their environment looking for danger.

Flashback

When memories occur suddenly, accompanied by strong emotion, and the victims find themselves reliving the event

Dissociative Subtype

Describing victims who do not necessarily react with the reexperiencing or hyperarousal, characteristic of PTSD. Rather, individuals with PTSD who experience dissociation have less arousal than normal along with feelings of unreality

Delayed Onset PTSD

Individuals show few or no symptoms immediately or for months after a trauma, but at least 6 months later, and perhaps years afterward, develop full-blown PTSD

Acute Stress Disorder

Occurring within the first month after the trauma, but the different name emphasizes the severe reaction that some people have immediately

Catharsis

Reliving emotional trauma to relieve emotional suffering

Imaginal Exposure

In which the content of the trauma and the emotions associated with it are worked through systematically

Fear Memory Reconsolidation

Referring to the process when fear memory is reactivated and stored back into long-term memory again

Adjustment Disorders

Describe anxious or depressive reactions to life stress that are generally milder than one would see in acute stress disorder or PTSD but are nevertheless impairing in terms of interfering with work or school performance, interpersonal relationships, or other areas of living

Attachment Disorders

Refers to disturbed and developmentally inappropriate behaviors in children, emerging before five years of age, in which the child is unable or unwilling to form normal attachment relationships with caregiving adults.

Reactive Attachment Disorder

The child will very seldom seek out a caregiver for protection, support, and nurturance and will seldom respond to offers from caregivers to provide this kind of care.

Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder

Would result in a pattern of behavior in which the child shows no inhibitions whatsoever to approaching adults. Such a child might engage in inappropriately intimate behavior by showing a willingness to immediately accompany an unfamiliar adult figure somewhere without first checking back with a caregiver

Obsessive Compulsive and Disorders

Pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency. Preoccupation with details, rules, and lists, so that the point of the activity is lost.

Obsessions

Are intrusive, distressing thoughts and mental images which repeat over and over. They are ego-dystonic. Such obsessions include dirt and contamination, need for symmetry, hoarding, scrupulosity, aggressive content, and superstitious fears

Compulsions

Are behaviors people perform in order to try and reduce or remove the fear of anxiety caused by obsessions. Such compulsions include cleaning and washing, arranging until things are “just right”, hoarding, checking, and mental rituals

1. Symmetry/ Exactness/ “just right”

2. Forbidden thoughts or actions

3. Cleaning/ Contamination

4. Hoarding

Types of Obsessions and Compulsions: There are four major types of obsessions;

Tic Disorder

characterized by involuntary movement (sudden jerking of limbs, for example)

Tourette’s Disorder

More complex tics with involuntary vocalizations

Pediatric Autoimmune Disorder Associated with Streptococcal Infection or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome

OCD and tics that occurred after a bout of strep throat

Thought–Action Fusion

When clients with OCD equate thoughts with the specific actions or activity represented by the thoughts

Exposure and Ritual Prevention (ERP)

A process whereby the rituals are actively prevented and the patient is systematically and gradually exposed to the feared thoughts or situations

Psychosurgery

Is one of the more radical treatments for OCD. It is a misnomer that refers to neurosur gery for a psychological disorder.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) or Body Dysmorphia

Is a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others. The disorder has been referred to as “imagined ugliness”.

Hoarding Disorder

Is a mental health condition in which a person feels a strong need to save a large number of items, whether they have monetary value or not, and experiences significant distress when attempting to get rid of the items.

1. Excessive acquisition of things,

2. Difficulty Discarding Anything

3. Living with excessive clutter under conditions best characterized as gross disorganization

The three major characteristics of Hoarding is;

Retail Therapy

Shopping or collecting things may be a response to feeling down or depressed

Trichotillomania

also known as Hair Pulling Disorder, it is the urge to pull out one’s own hair from anywhere on the body, including the scalp, eyebrows, and arms.

Excoriation

also known as Skin Picking Disorder, it  is characterized, as the label implies, by repetitive and compulsive picking of the skin, leading to tissue damage

1. Serotonin Hypothesis

2. Brain Imaging

3. Genetics

4. Neuroimmunology

Biological OCD Etiology

1. Psychodynamic

2. Personality

3. Behavioral

Psychological OCD Etiology

1. Accommodation

2. Adaptive Mechanisms

Social OCD Etiology

Schizophrenia

The startling disorder is characterized by a broad spectrum of cognitive and emotional dysfunctions, including delusions and hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, and inappropriate emotions.

Catatonia

alternating immobility and excited agitation

Hebephrenia

Silly and immature emotionality

Paranoia

delusions of grandeur or persecution

Emil Kraepelin

is generally credited for producing the first coherent definition of schizophrenia called DEMENTIA PRAECOX

Eugene Bleuler

renamed SCHIZOPHRENIA which means the splitting of the psychic processes.

1. Autism

2. Affective Blunting

3. Ambivalence

4. Disturbance of the Association

The 4 A symptoms are:

Associative Splitting

This concept emphasized the “breaking of associative threads,” or the destruction of the forces that connect one function to the next.

Kurt Schneider

“first rank severe psychotic disorder which includes thought insertion, withdrawal, thought broadcasting, voices communicating, delusions of being externally controlled.

Psychotic Behavior

Has been used to characterize many unusual behaviors, although in its strictest sense, it usually involves delusions (irrational beliefs) and/or hallucinations (sensory experiences in the absence of external events)

1. Positive Symptoms

   • Delusions

   • Hallucinations

   • Disorganized Speech

   • Disorganized Behavior

2. Negative Symptoms

   • Loss of Interest/Motivation

   • Difficulty Communicating with Others

   • Withdrawal from Family and Friends

   • Difficulty Structuring and Organizing Activities

   • Neglecting Things

Schizophrenia requires at least 6 months of continuous signs of disturbance. During at least 1 month of that period at least two of the following symptoms are present and at least one symptom must be delusion, hallucination or disorganized speech.

Positive Symptoms

They add something to the patient’s experience of the world

Delusions

A belief that would be seen by most members of a society as a misrepresentation of reality. It has been called “the basic characteristic of madness”

Hallucinations

The experience of sensory events without any input from the surrounding environment

Negative Symptoms

They take something away from the patient’s abilities

Disorganized Symptoms

include rambling speech, erratic behavior, and inappropriate affect

Erotomanic Type

A person usually of a higher status is in love with the patient . Usually occurs in females. Delusion is usually more romantic than sexual

Grandiose Type

Inflated self-worth, power, knowledge, identity or special relationship with a deity or an important person