AP Psychology Vocabulary | Unit 8 | Clinical Psychology

Psychological Disorder

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

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

a psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity

Medical Model

the concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital

DSM-5

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

Anxiety Disorders

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

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

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

Panic Disorder

an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations. Often followed by worry over a possible next attack

Phobia

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

Social Anxiety Disorder

intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such

Agoraphobia

fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide-open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience

Post-Traumatic Growth

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

Mood Disorders

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes. See major depressive disorder, mania, and bipolar disorder

Major Depressive Disorder

a mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms, at least one of which must be either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure

Mania

a mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state

Bipolar Disorder

a mood disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania

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

Psychosis

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

Delusions

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

Hallucination

an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present

Somatic Symptom Disorder

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

Conversion Disorder

a disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found

Illness Anxiety Disorder

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

Dissociative Disorders

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

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

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

Anorexia Nervosa

an eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly (15 percent or more) underweight

Bulimia Nervosa

an eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating (usually of high-calorie foods) with purging (by vomiting or laxative use) or fasting

Antisocial Personality Disorder

a personality disorder in which a person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members. May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist

Psychotherapy

treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth

Biomedical Therapy

prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology

Eclectic Approach

an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy

Psychoanalysis

(1) Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. (p. 557) (2) Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences—and the therapist’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight

Resistance

in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material

Interpretation

in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight

Transference

in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent)

Psychodynamic Theory

therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight

Insight Therapies

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

Client-Centered Therapy

a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients’ growth

Active Listening

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers’ client-centered therapy

Unconditional Positive Regard

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

Behavior Therapy

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors

Counterconditioning

behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning

Exposure Therapies

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid

Systematic Desensitization

a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

an anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking

Aversive Conditioning

a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol)

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

Cognitive Therapy

therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions

Rational-Emotive Behavior Theory (REBT)

a confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people’s illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior)

Group Therapy

therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction

Family Therapy

therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members

Regression Toward the Mean

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

Meta-Analysis

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

Evidence-Based Practice

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

Therapeutic Alliance

a bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client’s problem

Resilience

the personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma

Psychopharmacology

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior

Antipsychotic Drugs

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

Antianxiety Drugs

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation

Antidepressant Drugs

drugs used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. (Several widely used antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—SSRIs)

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)

the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity

Psychosurgery

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior

Lobotomy

a psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain