Psychological Disorders: Concepts, History, Models, Diagnosis, and Research Methods

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions across psychological disorder criteria, historical perspectives, theoretical models, diagnostic systems, assessment methods, and scientific research designs.

Distress

A criterion for determining psychological disorders defined as emotional suffering experienced by the individual.

Dysfunction

A criterion for determining psychological disorders involving significant impairment that interferes with daily life, work, or social functioning.

Danger

A criterion for determining psychological disorders defined as a significant risk of harm to oneself or others.

Deviance

A criterion for determining psychological disorders defined as behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that significantly violate social or cultural norms.

Medical Model

A perspective that views psychological abnormality as caused by physiological malfunctions, organizing presenting problems into diagnostic categories reflecting underlying biological illness.

Diathesis-Stress Model

A theoretical framework positing that psychological disorders develop from a combination of a predisposition (diathesis) and an environmental trigger (stress).

Trepanation

An ancient stone-age treatment practice involving drilling holes into the skull, historically believed to release evil spirits or supernatural forces causing abnormal behavior.

Wandering Womb

An ancient Greek concept associated with Hippocrates, asserting that hysteria in women was caused by the uterus wandering throughout the body.

Avicenna

An Islamic philosopher and physician who identified the middle brain as responsible for intellectual dysfunction, the frontal areas as controlling reasoning, and emphasized that emotional states impact health.

Melancholia

A broad historical term prominent in the Renaissance used to describe conditions that today would correspond to depression and anxiety.

Bedlam

The notorious Bethlehem Hospital asylum in London, known in the 1700s and 1800s for deplorable conditions and coercive practices such as bloodletting, cold baths, and rotational chairs.

Alienists

The historical term for early psychiatrists in the 18th and 19th centuries who developed biological and psychological perspectives and increasingly relied on asylums for treatment.

Moral Therapy

An 18th and 19th-century movement toward more psychological and humane treatment in asylums, emphasizing structured schedules, mild discipline, and discussion rather than physical coercion.

Custodial Care

A practice that replaced moral therapy in the late 19th century, characterized by warehousing mentally ill individuals in large, overcrowded state institutions with minimal active treatment.

Dorothea Dix

The most famous 19th-century reformer of asylum conditions who led the crusade to establish state mental hospitals.

Thomas Szasz

A psychiatrist known for his 'Myth of Mental Illness' critique, arguing that minds cannot be biologically diseased and framing psychological distress as non-medical 'problems in living'.

Deinstitutionalization

The widespread release of patients from state mental hospitals starting in the 20th century, driven by criticisms of hospital conditions, economic pressures, and the advent of psychotropic drugs.

Reuptake

The process by which the presynaptic neuron reabsorbs neurotransmitters from the synaptic cleft, reducing the amount of neurotransmitter left in the synapse.

Degradation

The biochemical process in which the receiving neuron releases enzymes into the synapse to break down neurotransmitters into other biochemicals.

Epigenetics

The study of how environmental conditions affect gene expression by instructing specific genes to turn on or off without altering the underlying DNA sequence.

Polygenic Process

A process in which multiple genetic abnormalities combine in an individual to contribute to a specific psychological disorder.

Passive Interaction

A gene-environment interaction where parents' genes shape the child's environment, and the child passively receives these genetic and environmental influences.

Evocative Interaction

A gene-environment interaction where an individual's inherited traits encourage or evoke specific reactions from people in their social environment.

Active Interaction

A gene-environment interaction where individuals actively select, seek out, or avoid specific environments based on inherited genetic preferences.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A biological treatment for severe mental disorders in which a seizure is induced by passing electrical currents through the brain.

Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS)

An invasive surgical treatment technique involving the implantation of electrodes on the vagus nerve to deliver electrical impulses to the brain.

Psychodynamic Theory

A psychological perspective originating with Sigmund Freud proposing that psychological symptoms reflect underlying unconscious conflicts, early relationship patterns, and internal tension.

Classical Conditioning

A learning paradigm where a neutral stimulus (NS) is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) until the neutral stimulus alone elicits a conditioned response (CR).

Operant Conditioning

A learning process in which behaviors are strengthened or weakened based on the consequences (reinforcement or punishment) that follow them.

Positive Reinforcement

An operant conditioning procedure where a desired consequence is produced following a behavior, increasing the likelihood that the behavior will recur.

Negative Reinforcement

An operant conditioning procedure where an undesired event or circumstance is removed after a behavior, increasing the future likelihood of that behavior.

Positive Punishment

An operant conditioning procedure where an undesired consequence is produced following a behavior, decreasing the likelihood of the behavior recurring.

Negative Punishment

An operant conditioning procedure where a pleasant event or circumstance is removed after a behavior, decreasing the likelihood of that behavior.

Behavioral Activation

A behavioral therapy technique that encourages clients to increase engagement in rewarding and meaningful activities to alleviate symptoms such as depression.

Automatic Thoughts

Spontaneous, immediate thoughts and interpretations that occur in daily life in response to specific situations.

Intermediate Beliefs

General rules, conditional assumptions, and attitudes that guide and influence automatic thoughts.

Core Beliefs

Fundamental, basic philosophies or mindsets that individuals hold about themselves, others, and the world.

Schemas

Mental structures that individuals use to organize, store, and process environmental information.

Cognitive Distortions

Systematic errors in thinking, such as catastrophizing, mind reading, and all-or-nothing thinking, that reinforce negative emotions and dysfunctional belief systems.

Person-Centered Therapy

A humanistic therapeutic approach developed by Carl Rogers emphasizing an individual's capacity for self-direction and growth when provided with genuine, empathetic, and accepting conditions.

Unconditional Positive Regard

One of the three core conditions in person-centered therapy characterized by complete, non-judgmental acceptance of the client by the therapist.

Narrative Therapy

A constructivist therapeutic approach that focuses on the stories people construct to make sense of their experiences, utilizing techniques like externalizing the problem.

Cultural Humility

An ongoing perspective in multicultural therapy where clinicians remain open, curious, and aware of their own cultural assumptions.

Feminist Therapy

A therapeutic approach holding that societal patriarchy is the root cause of many problems labeled as mental disorders, aiming for social reform alongside individual therapy.

Diagnosis

A label attached to a specific cluster of co-occurring symptoms, providing a shorthand description of a condition, its potential etiology, course, and treatment indications.

Etiology

The cause or origin of a specific psychological disorder or condition.

Reliability

The consistency of a classification or assessment system in producing the same diagnostic results across different evaluators or repeated testing.

Validity

The degree to which a classification system or assessment tool actually characterizes or measures what it is intended to evaluate.

Diagnostic Bias

Systematic errors in diagnosis resulting from clinician biases related to gender, race, ethnicity, or cultural background.

DSM-5

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition), published in 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association, outlining diagnostic criteria for psychological disorders.

ICD-10

The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (Tenth Revision), completed in 1992 by the World Health Organization to classify medical and psychological conditions.

Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM)

An alternative diagnostic framework that emphasizes idiographic case formulation across three axes: Personality (P-Axis), Mental Functioning (M-Axis), and Subjective Experience (S-Axis).

Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)

A diagnostic research initiative by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) aiming to classify mental illnesses using neuroscience, neural circuits, and biomarkers rather than observable behaviors.

Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP)

A dimensional alternative diagnostic classification framework that organizes psychopathology hierarchically across higher-order dimensions, spectra, subfactors, and symptom components.

MMPI-2

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, an objective personality assessment tool that utilizes validity scales (e.g., Lie, Infrequency, Correction) and clinical scales to evaluate psychological functioning.

Independent Variable

The variable in an experiment that is intentionally manipulated by the researcher to determine its causal effect.

Dependent Variable

The variable measured by researchers in an experiment to evaluate the outcome produced by manipulating the independent variable.

Confounding Variables

Factors that might inadvertently affect the variables of interest in an experiment and confound the results.

Random Assignment

A procedure relying on chance to assign participants to study conditions, ensuring equivalent distribution across experimental and control groups.

Efficacy

A measure of how well a therapy works in highly controlled experimental settings with a narrowly defined group of participants.

Effectiveness

A measure of how well a therapy works in real-world clinical settings with broader patient populations.

Single-Case Experimental Design

An experimental approach (such as an ABAB or reversal design) in which an intervention is introduced, withdrawn, and reinstated to measure individual behavioral responses on and off treatment.

Meta-Analysis

A statistical technique used to summarize and synthesize results and effect sizes across multiple independent research studies.

Effect Size

A standardized statistical metric in meta-analysis that quantifies the average strength or magnitude of a treatment effect or relationship across studies.