chapter #15 - texbook

abnormal behaviour

• mental illness

• psychological disorders

• psychopathology

historical understanding of mental illness

• people who behaved strangely were thought to be possessed by a demon

  • witches in league with the devil

  • victim of god’s punishment

medical model

• useful to think of abnormal behaviour as a disease

diagnosis

• distinguishing one’s illness from another

etiology

• apprentice causation and dvelopmental history of an illness

prognosis

• forecast about the probable course of an illness

criteria of abnormal behavior

• deviance

• maladaptive behaviour

• personal distress

deviance

• behaviour deviarws from what their society considers acceptable

maladaptive behaviour

• everyday adaptive behaviour is impaired

  • key crieria in substance use disorders

personal distress

• individuals report of great personal distress

stereotypes of psychological disorders

• osychological disorders are incurable

• people w psychological disorders are violent and dangerous

• peole with psychological disorders behave in bizarre ways and are different from normal people

  • difficulty distinguishing normality from abnormality

DSM

• diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders

• classifying psychological disorders

• place people in categories

epidemiology

• study of distribution of mental or physical disorders in a population

prevalence

• percentage of a population that exhibits a disorder during a specified time period

anxiety disorders

• feelings of excessive apprehension and anxiety

  • can be chronic

  • levels of anxiety with disturbing regularity

  • develop one then suffer from another

• generalized anxiety disorder

• chronic, high level of anxiety that is not tied to any specific threat

  • free-floating anxiety

  • worry about yesterday’s mistakes and tomorrow’s problem

  • worry about minor matters

    • muscle tension, diarrhea, vomiting, faintness, sweating, heart palpitations

specific phobia

• persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that presents no real danger

  • can develop phobic responses to anything

  • origins lie in part in the visual similarity of the configurations to something dangerous

  • fears are irrational

  • unable to calm themselves when confronted by a ohobic object

panic disorders

• recurrent attacks of overwhelming anxiety that usually occur suddenly and unexpectedly

agoraphobia

• concerned about exhibiting panic in public

  • fear of public spaces

obsessive compulsive disorder

• uncontrollable intrusion of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions)

  • lost control of their mind and may be plagued by uncertainty

  • rituals that temporarily relieve anxiety

body-dysmorphic disorder

• unrelenting pre-occupation with what they perceive to be a physical flaw

excoriation

• skin picking

collyer brothers syndrome

• inability to dispose of things

  • families enable the hoarding

hoarding disorder

• difficulty discarding posessions

  • no matter how worthless

• hang on to items to avoid stress of throwinf them out

• hoard to extent that posessions disrupt normal lives

PTSD

• any variety of traumatic event

• does nut surface until after the stressor happens

• re-experincing traumatic event

PTSD includes:

• reactive attachment disorder

• disnhibited social engagement disorder

• CPTSD

• acute stressor disorder

• adjustment disorder

potential causation of PTSD:

• intensity of ones reaction at the time of the traumatic event

• intense emotional reactions during or after the traumatic event → increased vulnerability to PTSD

CPTSD

• broader

• dysregulation

• difficulties in relationships

• negative self-conceptm

etiology of anxiety

• biological factors

• conditioning and learning

• cognitive factors

• stress

biological factors

• more genetic similarity higher concordance rates than relatives with less genetic overlap

• moderate genetic predisposition to anxietydrugs that reduce anxiety alter nt activitiy at synapses that release GABA

• disturbances in neural circuits using GABA may play a role in some types of anxiety disorders

conditioning and learning

• anxiety responses may be acquired through classical condiioning and maintained through operant conditioning