Clinical Psychology, Psychopathology, and Transdiagnostic Processes

Comprehensive practice flashcards defining core clinical psychology terms, diagnostic classifications, transdiagnostic mechanisms, indigenous Māori concepts, and therapeutic interventions from lecture notes.

Physiological Arousal Curve

The natural biological trajectory whereby sympathetic fight-or-flight arousal reaches a peak and inevitably decreases over time, demonstrating that acute bodily anxiety symptoms are transient and adaptive.

Metaworry

A primary maintaining cognitive mechanism in Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) involving secondary appraisal and worry about worrying itself (e.g., believing that excessive worrying will cause physical illness or insanity).

Mae Piringa Tangata

The Māori term for social anxiety disorder, characterized by marked and persistent fear of social situations involving possible scrutiny and negative evaluation by others.

Safety Behaviours

Actions performed during anxiety-provoking situations (such as checking a mobile phone in a café) intended to prevent feared catastrophe, providing brief relief while preventing the brain from learning that the situation is safe.

Interoceptive Exposure

A CBT technique requiring deliberate, repeated exposure to feared internal bodily sensations (such as breathlessness, dizziness, or tachycardia) to remediate catastrophic misinterpretations of panic symptoms.

Thought-Action Fusion (TAF)

A cognitive bias in OCD where having an intrusive thought is equated with having actually committed the act (moral TAF) or is believed to directly increase the probability of that event occurring in reality (likelihood TAF).

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

The first-line psychological intervention for OCD involving systematically confronting anxiety-provoking triggers without performing compulsive rituals, enabling natural habituation and cognitive processing.

Conduct Problems

A range of acting-out behaviours reflecting a failure to follow age-appropriate societal compliance and non-aggression norms, encompassing Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD).

Callous-Unemotional (CU) Traits

A diagnostic specifier for Conduct Disorder characterized by low empathy, restricted affect, and absent guilt, which predicts more severe, chronic, and treatment-resistant trajectories.

Coercion Cycle

A maintaining family interaction described by Fairchild et al. ($2023$) wherein parental escalation (shouting or hitting) is negatively reinforced when the child temporarily complies, and child escalation is reinforced when the parent ultimately backs down.

Circadian Delay in Adolescence

A developmentally normative biological shift during puberty whereby circadian sleep-wake rhythms and evening sleepiness shift later, often clashing with early school start times to produce chronic sleep debt.

Anhedonia

A cardinal diagnostic symptom of major depressive disorder marked by markedly diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities, flattened emotion, and loss of motivation.

Family Accommodation

Changes family members make to their behaviour in response to a child's symptoms (such as modifying routines, answering repetitive questions, or facilitating avoidance), which relieves distress short-term but maintains anxiety long-term.

Emotion Coaching

A parent-focused intervention (e.g., Tuning in to Teens) structured around five steps: emotional self-awareness, viewing emotions as connection opportunities, validating feelings, labelling affect, and collaborative problem-solving.

Power, Threat, Meaning Framework (PTMF)

A non-diagnostic framework developed by UK critical psychologists that conceptualises psychological distress as an understandable, socially constructed reaction to how power operates, the threats experienced, and the meaning attributed to them.

Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)

An experimental framework launched by the NIMH around $2010$ to restructure research funding by classifying mental disorders along continuous biological, neural, and behavioral dimensions rather than categorical DSM syndromes.

Harmful Dysfunction

Wakefield's hybrid conceptualisation of mental disorder requiring both an objective evolutionary failure of an internal psychological or biological mechanism (dysfunction) and a socially determined value judgement of harm.

Symptomatic Heterogeneity

The clinical reality in which individuals carrying the identical diagnostic label exhibit completely divergent symptom profiles, such as the $636{,}120$ mathematical symptom combinations that satisfy DSM-$5$ PTSD criteria.

Transdiagnostic Mechanism

An underlying cognitive, affective, or behavioural process (such as avoidance, rumination, or intolerance of uncertainty) that causally operates across multiple distinct diagnostic categories.

Three-Stage Model of Addiction (Koob & Volkow)

A neurocircuitry model mapping substance use across three recurring phases: binge/intoxication (striatal dopamine/opioid positive reinforcement), withdrawal/negative affect (limbic negative reinforcement), and preoccupation/anticipation (frontal/hippocampal craving).

3E Psychopathology

A theoretical stance viewing mental disorders as stuck relational patterns emerging across brain, body, and world, grounded in embodiment (mind constituted by body), embedment (ecological shaping), and enactivism (sense-making for agency).

Structural Inequity

Patterned, predictable disadvantage embedded in institutional policies, laws, and systems (such as institutional racism, epistemic dominance, and resource misallocation) rather than individual choices or deficits.

Whakapapa Ontology

An indigenous Māori worldview emphasizing genealogical connections, relational order, and spiritual-material unity linking atua (spiritual entities), whenua (land), and whānau (family).

Hui Process

A culturally grounded clinical engagement model in Aotearoa comprising four stages: Mihimihi (initial greeting), Whakawhānaungatanga (relational connection), Kaupapa (core assessment purpose), and Poroporoaki/whakamutunga (formal closing).

I-Thou Orientation

Martin Buber's relational philosophy in which the clinician meets the client as a whole, unique agent in mutual presence and non-judgemental encounter, rather than viewing them as an objectified set of symptoms (I-It).

Respect-Focused Therapy (RFT)

A therapeutic modality grounded in bilateral respect (from Latin 'respicere', meaning to look again), balancing power dynamics, de-pathologising human suffering, and prioritising authenticity over professional posturing.

Psychological Flexibility

The transdiagnostic capacity to remain fully in the present moment, stay open to experiencing whatever thoughts and sensations arise, and take deliberate action in service of chosen personal values.

Cognitive Fusion

A state of entanglement in which individuals become excessively caught up in words, internal rules, and evaluations, treating subjective cognitive constructs as literal external truths.

Experiential Avoidance

The unwillingness to remain in contact with private experiences (thoughts, feelings, memories, physical sensations) leading to suppression, denial, or withdrawal strategies that paradoxically amplify distress.

Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia

The biological theory proposing that schizophrenia involves dopaminergic dysregulation, primarily excess dopamine activity along subcortical pathways driving positive symptoms and hypodopaminergic activity in the prefrontal cortex.

Duration of Untreated Psychosis (DUP)

The length of time between the initial manifestation of psychotic symptoms and the commencement of adequate clinical treatment; the single strongest predictor of long-term symptomatic and functional prognosis.

Matakite

A Māori cultural experience of visionary ability or spiritual foresight that may be conceptualised within cultural models as an ancestral gift rather than a psychiatric symptom.

Schizoaffective Disorder

An uninterrupted psychiatric condition characterized by a major mood episode concurrent with Criterion A of schizophrenia, alongside at least $2$ weeks of delusions or hallucinations occurring without major mood symptoms.

Brief Psychotic Disorder

The presence of one or more psychotic symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, or catatonic behaviour) lasting at least $1$ day but less than $1$ month, followed by a full return to premorbid functioning.

Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)

A trauma disorder typically stemming from chronic, inescapable interpersonal violation that includes core PTSD features plus three domains of self-organisation disturbance: severe affect dysregulation, persistent negative self-concept, and relational difficulties.

Moral Injury

The profound psychological, social, and spiritual suffering that emerges when an individual perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that severely violate their own moral and ethical belief system.

Dissociative Amnesia

An inability to recall important autobiographical information—usually of a traumatic or stressful nature—that is inconsistent with ordinary forgetfulness and cannot be attributed to a neurological or substance etiology.

Hot Spots

In Trauma-Focused CBT, the specific moments of peak emotional agony, horror, or panic within a trauma narrative that are re-experienced during flashbacks and nightmares and require targeted exposure and cognitive updating.

Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation

Gross's ($2015$) cyclical framework outlining four sequential stages of affect regulation: identification (detecting emotional need), strategy selection, implementation, and ongoing monitoring.

Equifinality

A core principle of developmental psychopathology establishing that multiple distinct early risk factors and developmental pathways can culminate in the same diagnostic outcome.

Multifinality

A core developmental principle establishing that individuals who share the exact same early risk factor or traumatic experience can develop along divergent trajectories toward entirely different psychological outcomes.

Cognitive Avoidance Theory of Worry

The theory proposing that worry functions primarily as an internal linguistic-cognitive mechanism to avoid experiencing unpleasant somatic distress and acute emotional activation triggered by perceived future threats.

Intolerance of Uncertainty

A dispositional characteristic involving the inability to tolerate ambiguous situations or unpredictable outcomes, which triggers continuous prospective mental problem-solving and worry.

Persistent Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia)

A chronic form of depression marked by depressed mood and at least $2$ accompanying symptoms lasting continuously for at least $2$ years, without an absence of symptoms for greater than $2$ months at a time.

Manic Episode

A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and increased goal-directed activity lasting at least $1$ week, involving three or more manic symptoms and causing marked functional impairment.

Hypomanic Episode

A distinct period of persistently elevated or irritable mood lasting at least $4$ consecutive days with three or more manic symptoms, representing an observable change from baseline that does not cause marked functional impairment.

Default Mode Network (DMN)

An interconnected anatomical brain network engaged during passive rest, mind-wandering, and autobiographical retrieval whose elevated overactivity in depression is linked to excessive rumination and negative self-focus.

Rumination

A perseverative, passive cognitive thinking style characterized by repetitively dwelling on the causes, meanings, and consequences of low mood, which exacerbates and prolongs depressive episodes.

Beck's Depressive Triad

A foundational cognitive model of depression consisting of pervasive, negative, automatic cognitive schemas regarding the self ('I am worthless'), the world ('people are unsupportive'), and the future ('it is hopeless').

Behavioural Activation

An empirical CBT intervention for mood disorders designed to reverse inertia and anhedonia by systematically scheduling, monitoring, and executing mastery and pleasure activities to re-establish environmental positive reinforcement.