AP Psychology - Abnormal Psych and Disorders

Dysfunction

Difficulty performing everyday tasks and behaviors, often a criterion for diagnosing mental disorders.

Distress

A negative emotional state that can interfere with daily functioning and well-being.

Eustress

Happy stress, excited, willing to step out of comfort zone

Stigma

A mark of disgrace, a bad or negative social label

Discrimination

Behavior, requires a power differential

Electic approach

An approach to therapy that uses various techniques

Maladaptive learned associations

Patterns of how you respond to the hard times in your life, negative impact

Diathesis-stress model

A theory that explains illness.

1. Predispositional vulnerability combined with…

2. …. stress from life experiences

Anxiety Disorders

A group of mental disorders with excessive fear or anxiety

Generalized anxiety disorder

Very difficult to relax, drains energy, exhausting, parasympathetic

Specific Phobias

An intense irrational fear of specific objects or situations

Acrophobia

Intense fear of heights

Arachnophobia

Intense fear of spiders

Agoraphobia

Intense fear of being outside

Panic Disorder

Falls under the category of anxiety disorders, characterized by regular but unpredictable panic attacks.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorders

A category of disorders involving unwanted obsessions and behaviors (rituals)

Hoarding Disorder

Difficulty in discarding items

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

ADHD, ADD, Autism

Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder

A group of disorders characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and psychosis

Negative symptoms

Subtracting good things

Flat affect

Not showing appropriate emotional reactions

Positive symptoms

Adding things you dont want (delusions or hallucinations)

Delusions

Fals beliefes, believing the untrue, a positive symptom

Delusions of Grandeur

Believeing you’re the chosen, or very important

Delusions of Paranoia/Persecution

Believing others are plotting against you, such as believing that the FBI is watching or tracking you.

Hallucinations

A perception without a sensation. Happens in Wernicke’s area, voices are heard, and are almost always scary and negative.

Disorganized Speech

Incoherent speech that does not follow grammar rules

Word Salad

Words are mixed together in a nonsensical way

Catatonic Stupor

Being unresponsive, even in the most extreme stimulations. (Ice water, pain)

Disorganized thinking

Thoughts are fragmented and very difficult to follow

Dopamine hypothesis

The theory that schizophrenia is linked to an overactivity of dopamine in the brain

Tardive Dyskinesia

Palsy in the face, a side effect of Anti-psychotics.

Depressive disorders

A group of disorders characterized by persistant sadness and loss of interest

Negative symptoms: Anhedonia, lack of motivation

Positive symptoms: Sadness, physical pain, hopelessness

Major Depressive Disorder

What everyone thinks of as depression, the most common depressive disorder

Persistent Depressive Disorder

Stays for a long time, not as easy to treat, a type of depressive disorder

Personality disorders

Lifelong pattern, persistent conflict with others

Cluster A: Weird

Cluster B: Mean

Cluster C: Afraid

Paranoid PD

Cluster A, distrust and suspicion of others

Schizotypal PD

Cluster A, Odd beliefs, difficulty forming relationships

Schizoid PD

Cluster A, Lack of interest in social relationships, limited expressions, very similar to autism

Antisocial PD

Cluster B, “Socio-path”, reduced feelings of guilt, fear, shame, and a reduced feeling of empathy.

Narcissistic PD

Cluster B, Reduced empathy, very arrogant. Uses people, and overly cares about appearance.

Borderline PD

Cluster B, Instability, regularly testing people, and sabotaging people

Histrionic PD

Cluster B, Positive borderline, still self-centered, but distrustful, manipulative.

Avoidant PD

Cluster C, fear of inadequacy, sensitive to criticsm

Dependent PD

Cluster C, Very needy, clingy, and submissive.

Obsessive-Compulsive PD

Cluster C, need for control and perfection

Dissociative disorders

Disconnecting with your identity or real life

Dissociation

Disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, or sense of self. Used as a shield from trauma

Dissociative amnesia

The inability to encode or recall episodic information that happened during dissociation.

Bipolar Disorders

A group of mood disorders characterized by alternating periods of depression and mania

Bipolar 1

A person experiences a full manic apisode, leans to the manic side, but still has depressive states

Bipolar 2

A person experiences hypomania, leans to the depressive side, and experiences a less intense mania

Cycling

Fluctuation between manic and depressive episodes

Mania

Lots of irrational energy, no concern for the consequences.