Chapter 14 - Psychological disorders

Diagnosis

Involves distinguising one illness from another.

Etiology

Refers to the apparent cause of developmental history of an illness

Prognosis

A forecast about the probable course of an illness

What are the criteria to make diagnoses

1. Deviance (behaviour deviates from what their society considers acceptable)

2. Maladaptive behaviour (everyday adaptive behaviour is impaired)

3. personal distress (diagnosis of a psychological disorder is based on an individual’s report of great personal distress.)

What does DSM stand for

Diagnostic and statistical manual

GAD

Generalised anxiety disorder: Marked by a chronic, high level of anxiety that is not tied to a specific threat.

Specific phobia

A persistent, irrational fear of an object or situation that presents no realistic danger.

Panic disorder

Characterised by sudden attacks of overwhelming anxiety that can occur suddenly and unexpectedly.

Agoraphobia

fear of going out in public

OCD

Obsessive compulsive disorder: Persistent, uncontrollable intrusion of unwanted thoughts and urges to engage in senseless rituals.

PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder: Involves enduring psychological disturbances attributed to the experience of a major traumatic event.

symptoms: anxiety, anger, vulnerability, problems with social relations

Dissociative disorders

A class of disorders in which people lose contact with their consciousness or memory, resulting in disruptions in their sense of identity.

Dissociative amnesia

Sudden loss of memory for personal information that is too extensive to be normal forgetting.

DID

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Disruption of identity marked by the experience of two or more largely complete, and usually very different personalities.

Major depressive disorder

Persistent feelings of sadness & despair and loss of interest in previous sources of pleasure.

Anhedonia (result of MDD)

A diminished ability to experience pleasure

Bipolar disorder

Marked by the experience of both depressed & manic periods

Schizophrenia

A disorder marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganised thinking & speech and deterioration of adaptive behaviour.

Further symptoms: Personal hygiene deteriorates, hearing of voices, argumentative.

Delusions

False beliefs that are maintained even though they are clearly out of touch with reality.

Hallucination

Sensory perception that occurs in the absence of a real, external stimulus or is a gross distortion of perceptual input.

Types of schizophrenic disorders

Paranoid: Delusions of persecution/grandeur

Catatonic: Motor disturbances

Disorganised: Incoherence, deterioration in adaptive behaviour and social withdrawal

Undifferentiated: Mixtures of schizophrenic symptoms

ASD

Autism spectrum disorder: ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by deficits in social interaction & communication, as well as restricted, repetitive interests and activities.

Symptoms:

Minimal eye contact, declining social interests/smiling, inflexibility (minor changes can cause meltdowns.)

Personality disorders

Class of disorders marked by extreme, inflexible personality traits that cause subjective distress or impaired social and occupational functioning.

Eating disorders

Severe disturbances in eating behaviour characterised by preoccupation with weight concerns and unhealthy efforts to control weight.

Anorexia Nervosa

Fear of gaining weight, disturbed body image, refusal to maintain a normal body weight and use of dangerous methods to lose weight.

Bulimia nervosa

Habitually engaging in out-of-control eating which is followed by unhealthy compensatory efforts like self-induced vomit, fasting, excessive exercise and abuse of laxatives/diuretics.

Binge-eating disorder

Distress induced eating binges that are no accompanied by the purging, fasting and excessive exercise.