mental health overview/intro

mental health

successful adaptation to stressors

2 elements that affect how individuals view mental illness

incomprehensibility and cultural relativity

mental illness

maladaptive responses to stressors

alarm reaction stage

fight or flight response

stage of resistance

Body attempts to adapt to stressor

Body regains homeostasis or adaptive mechanisms fail

stage of exhaustion

third stage of the general adaptation syndrome; the body's ability to resist stress becomes depleted; illness, disease, and even death may occur

stage of biological stress

somatic response to stress (sweating, adrenaline, pupils dilate, etc)

two primary psychological response patterns to stress

anxiety and grief

adaption

determined by the extent to which thoughts/feelings/behaviors interfere with functioning

peplaus 4 levels of anxiety

1. Mild

2. Moderate

3. Severe

4. Panic

mild anxiety

can be good, ex: before an exam

moderate

perceptual field begins to diminish, use ego defense mechanisms, ex: missing a stop sign pre exam bc of stress

severe anxiety

perceptual field diminishes greatly, ex: can't remember traumatic experience after the fact

panic anxiety

most intense state

ego defense mechanisms examples

compensation, denial, intellectualization, isolation, projection, regression, repression, etc

reaction formation

coping mechanism, say opposite of how you actually feel

psychoneurotic responses

after extended periods of repressed severe anxiety

psychotic responses

extended periods of panic anxiety, distortion of reality

neurosis

characterized by excessive anxiety, symptoms impair functioning, no gross distortion of reality

grief

subjective state of emotional, physical, and social responses to the loss of a valued entity

5 stages of grief

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

is grief a mental illness

no

maladaptive responses to grief include

clinical depression and risk for suicide