UNIT 12/13 Psychology terms

Psychological Disorder

deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.

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-IV-TR

the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, updated as of 2000 "text revision"; 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.

Phobia

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

Obsessive-compulsive Disorder (OCD)

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

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

an anxiety disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, 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

Somatoform Disorder

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

Conversion Disorder

a rare somatoform disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no psychological basis can be found.

Hypochondriasis

a somatoform disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of the 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. Formerly called multiple personality disorder.

Mood Disorders

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes.

Major Depressive Disorder

a mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or a medical condition, two or more weeks of significantly depressed moods, feelings of worthlessness, and diminished interest or pleasure in most activities.

Mania

a mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.

Bipolar Disorder

a mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania. (formerly called manic-depressive disorder.)

Schizophrenia

a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions.

Delusions

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

Personality Disorders

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

Antisocial Personality Disorder

a personality disorder in which the 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.

Eclectic Approach

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

Psychotherapy

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

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund 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 Therapy

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 the client'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 client's growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.)

Active Listening

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Roger's 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

a behavior therapy procedure that used classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.

Exposure Therapies

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) 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 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 and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Cognitive-behavioral Therapy

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

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.

Biomedical Therapy

prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system.

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.

Tardive Dyskinesia

involuntary movements of the facial muscles, tongue, and limbs; a possible neurotoxic side effect of long-term use of antipsychotic drugs that target certain dopamine receptors.

Antianxiety Drugs

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters.

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 now-rare 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.

Resilience

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