AP PSYCH VOCAB 8

ADHD

A chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.

DSM-5

a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders

Anxiety disorders

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

Gerneralized Anxiety Disorder

An anxiety disorders in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of automatic nervous system arousal

Panic Disorder

an anxiety disorder characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear

Phobia

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

Social Anxiety Disorder

Intense fear and avoidance of social situations

Agoraphobia

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

OCD

a disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts, actions, or both

PTSD

a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, hypervigilance, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for 4 weeks or more after a traumatic experience

Mood Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes

Mania

a hyperactive, wildly optimistic states in which dangerously poor judgement is common

Bipolar Disorder

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

Schizophrenia

a disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished, inappropriate emotional expression

Psychosis

a group of disorders marked by irrational ideas, disorted perceptions, and a loss of contact with reality

Delusions

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

Hallucinations

false sensory experience, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus

Somatic Symptom Disorder

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

Conversion Disorder

a disorder related to somatic symptom disorder in which a person experiences very specfic, physical symptoms that are not compatiable with recognized medical or neurological conditions

Illness Anxiety Disorder

a disorder related to somatic symptom disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease

Dissociative Disorders

Controversial, rare disorders in which conscious awareness becomes seperated from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings

Antisocial Personality Disorder

a personality disorder in which a person 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 way to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy

Psychoanalysis

Freud believed that patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences and the therapist’s interpretation of them released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight

Resistance

blocking anxiety from consciousness

Transference

The patients transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships

Psychodynamic Therapy

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

Clien-centered Therapy

The therapist uses techiques such as active listening within an accepting, genuine, and empathic environment to facilitate clients’ growth

Active Listening

Empathic hearing in which the listeners echoes, restates, and clarifies

Unconditional Positive Regard

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

Behavior Therapy

Applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors

Counterconditioning

Behavioral therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors

Systematic Desensitization

A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

A counterconditioning technique that treats anxiety through creative electronic simulations in which people can safely face their greatest fears

Aversive Conditioning

A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state

(REBT) Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy

A confrontational cognitive therapy that challenges people’s illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions

(CBT) Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

A popular intergrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy with behavior therapy

Regression Toward The Mean

the tendency of results that are extreme by chance on first measurement

Therapeutic Alliance

A bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, 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 scientific study of the effects of drugs on the mind and behavior.

Antipsychotic Drugs

used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of sever thought disorder

Antidepressant Drugs

used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD

Electroconvulsive Therapy

A biomedical therapy for severly depressed patients in which an electric current is sent through the brain of an anestetized patient

Lobotomy

A psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients