Psychology Exam 2: Mood Disorders, Anxiety, OCD, Trauma, and Dissociation

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards reviewing clinical features, cognitive mechanisms, neurobiology, and evidence-based interventions for Mood Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, OCD, PTSD, and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Emotion

A state of arousal defined by subjective feelings such as sadness, anger, or disgust, often accompanied by physiological changes like altered heart rate or breathing, and sometimes triggered by events.

Affect

A temporary feeling state identified through observable expression, such as facial behavior and bodily mannerisms.

Mood

A pervasive, sustained emotional response that can color how an individual perceives and experiences the world.

Clinical Depression

A persistent low mood intense enough to impair functioning and enjoyment of life across situations, often occurring without a clear precipitant and accompanied by cognitive, somatic, and behavioral symptoms.

Depressive Triad

A cognitive pattern involving persistent negative, pessimistic evaluations of the self, the environment/world, and the future.

Psychomotor Retardation

A behavioral symptom characterized by slowed physical movements, reduced activity, and slowed speech or thought processing.

Psychomotor Agitation

A behavioral symptom characterized by conspicuous, excessive motor restlessness, pacing, or fidgeting.

Anhedonia

A core depressive symptom defined as the loss of interest or pleasure in previously enjoyable activities.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

A mood disorder characterized by one or more major depressive episodes involving depressed mood or anhedonia alongside other depressive symptoms lasting at least two weeks, with no history of mania.

Persistent Depressive Disorder (PDD)

A chronic pattern of depressed mood present more days than not for at least two years, accompanied by persistent cognitive and somatic symptoms rather than discrete, intense episodes.

Stress Generation

A reciprocal feedback phenomenon in depression where stressful life events worsen symptoms, and depressive behaviors subsequently create new interpersonal or environmental stressors.

Automatic Negative Thoughts

Rapid, habitual, and reflexively accepted negative interpretations arising in response to situations, typically focused on themes of failure, rejection, or loss.

Maladaptive Schemas

Broad, stable internal cognitive frameworks that bias information processing, predisposing individuals to interpret ambiguous situations unfavorably and expect failure.

Overgeneralization

A cognitive distortion where an individual draws a sweeping, global negative conclusion about their character or life based on an isolated adverse experience.

Arbitrary Inference

A cognitive distortion involving the formation of a negative conclusion without sufficient supporting evidence or despite contradictory facts.

Depressogenic Attributional Style

A habitual tendency to explain adverse events through internal ('my fault'), stable ('permanent'), and global ('affects everything') causal attributions.

Cognitive Restructuring

A core CBT technique in which patients identify negative automatic thoughts, test their empirical validity, recognize cognitive distortions, and replace them with balanced interpretations.

Behavioral Activation

A structured therapeutic approach that deliberately schedules and increases participation in rewarding, pleasant, or goal-oriented activities to reverse depressive withdrawal.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

An intervention that teaches nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness of thoughts and feelings as transient mental events rather than facts, primarily used to prevent depressive relapse.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)

A structured depression treatment focused on resolving interpersonal disputes, navigating role transitions, managing grief, and strengthening relationship communication skills.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A biological treatment administered under medical supervision that applies controlled electrical currents to the brain to induce a therapeutic seizure, typically used for severe or treatment-resistant depression.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

A noninvasive medical procedure utilizing targeted magnetic pulses to stimulate cortical brain regions, FDA-approved for treatment-resistant depression.

Mania

A distinct period of abnormally elevated, expansive, or irritable mood accompanied by persistently increased goal-directed activity, grandiosity, reduced need for sleep, and functional disruption.

Hypomania

An episode characterized by elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and heightened energy that is observable to others but lacks the severe functional impairment or hospitalization of full mania.

Euphoria

An exaggerated, intense sense of well-being, elation, and optimism that can accompany manic or hypomanic states.

Grandiosity

An inflated, unrealistic appraisal of one's own power, significance, talent, identity, or future prospects.

Decreased Need for Sleep

A manic symptom in which an individual sleeps substantially fewer hours than usual yet awakens feeling energized and exhibits no subjective daytime tiredness.

Flight of Ideas

A cognitive symptom marked by rapidly accelerating thoughts that jump abruptly from one topic to another in an interconnected or fragmented stream.

Pressured Speech

Rapid, voluminous, and urgent speech that is delivered with great intensity and is difficult or impossible for others to interrupt.

Bipolar I Disorder

A diagnosis requiring at least one lifetime full manic episode; major depressive episodes commonly occur but are not strictly required for diagnosis.

Bipolar II Disorder

A diagnosis requiring at least one hypomanic episode and at least one major depressive episode, without any lifetime history of a full manic episode.

Reward Sensitivity

A heightened motivational and neural responsiveness to anticipated reward or goal achievement, recognized as an underlying vulnerability factor for bipolar mania.

Lithium

A first-line mood-stabilizing medication used in bipolar disorder to control mania, reduce episode recurrence, and lower suicide risk, requiring close clinical blood monitoring to prevent toxicity.

Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy (IPSRT)

A psychotherapy for bipolar disorder designed to regulate daily social routines and sleep-wake cycles while addressing interpersonal stressors to prevent episode recurrence.

Fear

An immediate, present-oriented autonomic and cognitive reaction to an imminent, identifiable threat or danger.

Anxiety

A future-oriented, diffuse emotional and cognitive state marked by apprehension, chronic worry, muscle tension, and preparation for possible future adversity.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Marked, persistent fear or anxiety concerning social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to possible scrutiny, negative evaluation, humiliation, or rejection by others.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Chronic, pervasive, and uncontrollable worry across multiple life domains, accompanied by somatic symptoms including restlessness, muscle tension, and fatigue.

Panic Attack

An abrupt surge of intense fear or overwhelming discomfort peaking rapidly, accompanied by severe somatic symptoms such as palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, and depersonalization.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder defined by recurrent unexpected panic attacks accompanied by persistent apprehension about future attacks, their catastrophic consequences, or significant avoidant behavioral changes.

Agoraphobia

Marked fear and avoidance of multiple public or enclosed situations where escaping might be difficult or medical help unavailable if panic-like or incapacitating symptoms occur.

Specific Phobia

Persistent, disproportionate, and immediate fear of a circumscribed object or situation (such as animals, heights, or blood-injection-injury) leading to active avoidance or intense distress.

In Vivo Exposure

A therapeutic behavioral method involving systematic, planned, real-life contact with actual feared objects, environments, or situational triggers without avoidance.

Interoceptive Exposure

A treatment strategy for panic disorder involving the deliberate provocation of feared somatic sensations (e.g., hyperventilating, spinning) to habituate to arousal and eliminate catastrophic interpretations.

Triple-Vulnerability Model

An integrative model proposing that anxiety disorders emerge from the interaction of general biological vulnerability, general psychological vulnerability, and specific psychological vulnerability.

Negative Reinforcement in Avoidance

The operant learning process whereby avoiding a feared stimulus removes acute distress, rewarding the behavior and paradoxically strengthening long-term phobic avoidance.

Obsessions

Recurrent, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that enter consciousness involuntarily, causing marked anxiety or internal distress.

Compulsions

Repetitive overt behaviors or covert mental rituals that a person feels driven to perform to neutralize obsession-related anxiety or avert a feared catastrophe.

White-Bear Thought-Suppression Effect

A cognitive phenomenon whereby conscious efforts to suppress an unwanted thought paradoxically increase its accessibility, frequency, and intrusiveness.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

The behavioral gold-standard treatment for OCD in which individuals confront obsession triggers (exposure) while strictly refraining from engaging in neutralizing rituals (response prevention).

Frontal-Striatal Circuitry

A neurobiological brain circuit connecting regions like the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and caudate nucleus, exhibiting hyperactivation during symptom provocation in OCD.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A trauma-related disorder developing after exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, characterized by intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in mood/cognition, and hyperarousal lasting beyond one month.

Acute Stress Disorder (ASD)

A trauma-related syndrome featuring intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal symptoms that arise immediately following trauma exposure and last between three days and one month.

Hypervigilance

A state of persistent, exaggerated sensory scanning and physiological alertness for potential hazards, characteristic of PTSD and heightened anxiety.

Flashback

A dissociative re-experiencing symptom in PTSD where trauma memories feel as if the traumatic event is actively recurring in the present.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy

A trauma-focused CBT intervention involving repeated, structured imaginal revisiting of traumatic memories alongside gradual in vivo exposure to safe trauma reminders.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

A trauma-focused cognitive psychotherapy that targets and modifies distorted appraisals, excessive self-blame, and altered beliefs regarding trust, power, and safety following trauma.

Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

A structured PTSD therapy combining imaginal confrontation of traumatic material with rhythmic bilateral sensory stimulation, such as side-to-side eye tracking or taps.

Psychological Debriefing

A brief, structured single-session post-trauma intervention aimed at emotional venting and narrative processing; research indicates it is ineffective and may impede natural trauma recovery.

Dissociation

A disruption in the normally unified integration of conscious awareness, identity, perception, emotional experience, or autobiographical memory.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

A dissociative disorder characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states (alters) and recurrent discontinuities in autobiographical memory beyond normal forgetting.

Alter

A distinct identity or personality state described in DID that exhibits unique patterns of perceiving, relating, thinking, and behaving.

Trauma Model of DID

A developmental theory positing that DID originates as an internal defensive dissociative adaptation to severe, chronic physical or sexual abuse in early childhood.

Sociocognitive Model of DID

A perspective proposing that distinct DID identity states are shaped by cultural narratives, media exposure, heightened fantasy proneness, and suggestive psychotherapeutic prompting.

Iatrogenic Effect

An adverse symptom, exacerbation, or secondary condition inadvertently produced or reinforced by medical examination, treatment, or suggestive clinical practices.