AP Psych Unit 5 (Psychological Disorders) - Packet Vocab

Eustress Stress

Positive and motivational stress.

Distress Stress

Negative and debilitating stress.

ACEs

Childhood abuse or traumas that can influence long-term stress responses, health, and well-being.

GAS (General Adaptation System)

The body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases - alarm, resistance, and exhaustion (ARE).

Alarm (GAS - 1)

Nervous system activation resulting in heightened blood diversion to muscles and heart rate, preparing for resistance.

Resistance/Fight or Flight (GAS - 2)

Fully engaged in facing '‘threat” - Increased temperature, blood pressure, and respiration, with endocrine and epinephrine being pumped into your bloodstream.

Exhaustion (GAS - 3)

Reaching exhaustion, leaving you more vulnerable to illness or even physiological collapse.

Tend-and-befriend coping

Attempting to alleviate stress by focusing on nurture/connection and seeking comfort from others.

Problem-focused coping

Attempting to alleviate stress by directly challenging the stressor or the way we interact with it.

Emotion-focused coping

Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring the stressor and attending to emotional needs rather than the stressor itself.

Positive Psychology

The scientific study of human flourishing, with the goals of promoting strengths and virtues that foster well-being and resilience.

Gratitude

An appreciate emotion when recognizing one’s own good fortune or benefiting from others actions.

Signature Strengths

The focus/recognition of one’s strongest core strengths. Applying them to your life can lead to increased happiness, lower depression, and greater flourishing. Wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

Posttraumatic Growth

Positive psychological changes following trauma.

Dysfunction

Significant impairment in normal psychological, biological, or developmental processes leading to distressing, maladaptive patterns.

Perception of Distress

An individual’s subjective experience of reeling overwhelmed, unable to cope, or out of control, leading to dysfunction.

Deviation from the social norm

Behavior that significantly breaks social norms,contrasting normal, non-distressive, behavior.

American Psychiatric Association (APA)

Organization that has developed standards for psychological science, including the DSM and APA-Format.

Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM)

A widely used system for classifying psychological disorders.

World Health Organization (WHO)

UN’s special agency for global health, established to ensure the highest possible international health standards.

International Classification of Mental Disorders (ICD)

A global standard for classifying all health conditions, including mental disorders, maintained by WHO.

Eclectic Approach

A flexible, personalized treatment method that combines many techniques to create a tailored therapy plan.

Behavioral Perspective

Maladaptive learned associations through environmental interactions.

Psychodynamic Perspective

Unresolved childhood conflicts and unconscious thoughts - experiences shape personality.

Humanistic Perspective

Lack of social support and the inability to fulfill one’s potential.

Cognitive Perspective

Maladaptive thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, or emotions - focus on international processses.

Evolutionary Perspective

Maladaptive forms of behaviors that enable human survival.

Sociocultural Perspective

Problematic social and cultural contexts - culture shapes understanding.

Biological Perspective

Genetic or psychological predispositions.

Biopsychosocial Perspective

Framework recognizing the social, biological, and psychological factors of health.

Genetic Vulnerability (Diathesis)

Underlying vulnerability or predisposition to developing mental disorders.

Meta Analysis

Analyzing the results of multiple studies to reach and overall conclusion.

Psychotherapy

Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and a patient seeking growth.

Decentralized Treatments

Shifting mental health treatment away from large institutions to more accessible, community-based locations.

Nonmaleficence

Therapists should ethically seek to do a patient no harm.

Fidelity

Therapists should ethically establish trust and uphold a professional standard of conduct in service to the therapeutic community.

Integrity

Therapists should ethically be honest, truthful, and accurate.

Respect for people’s rights/Dignity

Therapists should ethically respect your and others dignity, recognizing privacy, confidentiality, and self-determination.

Free Association (PD)

Sigmund Freud’s technique that involves patients speaking freely and without censored thought.

Dream Interpretation (PD)

Accessing the unconscious mind through dreams to explore repressed emotions, desires, and conflicts.

Cognitive Restructuring (CT)

A core CBT technique designed to identify, challenge, and replace negative or irrational thoughts.

Fear Hierarchies (CT)

A structured, rankled list of anxiety provoking situations used to guide graded exposure therapy.

Cognitive Triad (CT)

Three core negative beliefs that fuel depression and other mental health disorders.

Exposure Therapy (BT)

Common for specific phobias, it is a type of treatment where consistent exposure is associated with a pleasant, relaxed state following previously anxiety-triggering stimuli.

Aversion Therapies (BT)

Associates un unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior.

Token Economies (BT)

Operant conditioning procedure where one earns rewards (tokens) for exhibiting a desired behavior for later exhange.

Biofeedback (BT)

Using sensors to monitor bodily functions.

Active-Listening (TT)

Empathetic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification.

Unconditional Positive Regard (TT)

A caring, accepting, non-judgemental attitude believed to help clients develop self-awareness and acceptance.

Antidepressants

Medication that lifts one up from a depressive state by increasing serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, improving neuroplasticity, mood, emotion, and stress regulation. (Slow-acting)

SSRIs

A type of antidepressant that increases serotonin levels in the brain by inhibiting (blocking) the reabsorption of serotonin into specific neurons. This improves the connection between neurons to elevate mood and reduce anxiety.

Anti-anxiety Medication

Medication that regulates neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine to reduce excessive nerve activity, essentially depressing the central nervous system activity. (Fast acting)

Mood Stabilizers

Medications that help out extreme emotional shifts between mania and depression, particularly in Bipolar and Personality Disorders by regulating neurotransmitters to reduce extreme emotional shifts; calming brain circuits.

Lithium

A common, potent mood stabilizer that regulates neurotransmitters and altering ion transport to reduce mania and depression intensity.

Anti-psychotics

Medication used to treat schizophrenia and other severe thought disorders by blocking dopamine receptors and the excess dopamine associated with psychosis.

Tardive Dyskinesia

A movement disorder related to regulation of dopamine in the nervous system, producing involuntary movement.

Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior (LAST RESORT).

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Repeated magnetic energy pulses to the brain used to simulate/suppress brain activity.

Electroconvulsive Therapy

A biomedical therapy for severe depression that uses brief electrical currents sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.

Lobotomy

A specific psychosurgery procedure formerly used to calm emotional/violent patients; cuts nerves between frontal lobes and emotion centers.