AP Psych Unit 8

clinical psychology

Active listening

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies

ADHD

 a chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness

Agoraphobia

fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open spaces

Anorexia nervosa

 an eating disorder in which a person maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight

Antianxiety drugs

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation 

Antidepressant drugs

 drugs used to treat depression and other types of mental disorders

Antipsychotic drugs

drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorders

Antisocial personality disorder

 a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others

Anxiety disorders

 psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety

Aversive conditioning

a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior

Behavior therapy

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behavior

Bipolar disorder

a mental health condition that that causes extreme mood swings and alternating between depression and a state of mania

Bulimia nervosa

an eating disorder in which a person alternates between binge eating and purging or fasting

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

a form of psychotherapy that focuses on modifying dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts by interrogating and uprooting negative or irrational beliefs

Client-centered therapy

a humanistic therapy, where a therapist uses active listening with a genuine, accepting, empathetic environment to help clients’ growth

Conversion disorder

a condition in which a person experiences physical symptoms of a health problem but no injury or illness to explain them

Counterconditioning

behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors

Delusions

 false beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders

Dissociative identity disorder (DID)

a rare dissociative disorder where a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities

Dissociative disorders

disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings

DSM-5

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders

electroconvulsive therapy

a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electrical current is sent through the brain

Evidence-based practice

clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and and patient characteristics and preferences

Exposure therapies

behavioral techniques that treat anxieties by exposing people to the things they fear and avoid

family therapy

therapy that treats the family as a system 

Generalized anxiety disorder

 an anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal

Group therapy

therapy conducted with groups, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction

Hallucination

false sensory experiences

Illness anxiety disorder

a disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease

Insight therapies

a variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses

Lobotomy

a surgical operation involving incision into the prefrontal lobe of the brain, formerly used to treat mental illness

Major depressive disorder

A mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life

Mania

 a mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state

Medical Model

the concept that diseases have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated and cured through treatment in hospital

Meta-analysis

a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies

Mood disorders

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes

OCD

a disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts and/or actions

Panic disorder

 an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable long episodes of dread in which a person experiences terror and frightening sensations

Personality disorder

psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning

Phobia

an anxiety disorder marked by persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation

Posttraumatic growth

 positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and and life crisis

Psychological disorder

a syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior

psychopharmacology

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior

Psychosis

a psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions

Psychotherapy

 treatment involving psychological techniques

PTSD

 A disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event

REBT (rational-emotive behavior therapy)

a confrontational cognitive therapy that vigorously challenges people’s illogical, self defeating attitudes and assumptions

Regression toward the mean

the tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)

 the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain

Rumination

compulsive fretting; overthinking about our problems and their causes

Schizophrenia

a psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished or inappropriate emotional expression

Social anxiety disorder

 intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such

Somatic symptom disorder

a psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apartments physical cause

Systematic desensitization

a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli

Token economy

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats

Transference

in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships