Abnormal Psych

Define Abnormality

When a person’s behaviors, thoughts, or feelings are highly unusual for the social context; causing distress, significantly interfering with social/occupational functions, and proving dangerous

What is hysteria? What are “humors”?

Psychological symptoms caused by physical processes, like diseases, resulting from imbalanced humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile- according to Hippocrates.

What are Cognitions?

How abnormal behavior is caused by altered thinking, leading to negative emotions and self-defeating actions.

What are self-efficacy beliefs?

The idea that people can control their actions, and how negative self-efficacy impairs functioning.

What is the normal-abnormal continuum?

a model showing transitions in normal-abnormal behavior. Problems in thoughts, feelings, and behavior vary from normal to abnormal; this model helps us understand them.

What is abnormal psychology? What is another term for it?

understanding, treating, and preventing dysfunction, also known as psychopathology, focusing on atypical behaviors.

What are the “Four Ds” (dimensions) of abnormality?

Dysfunction, Distress, Deviance, and Dangerousness

Dysfunction…

interferes with a person’s ability to function in daily life

Distress…

causes emotional or physical pain

Deviance…

is to be considered outside of cultural norms

Dangerousness…

can harm or scare self/others

displaying abnormal behavior doesn’t always mean…

you need a diagnosis

What is the Disease Model of Mental Illness?

When common behaviors can be thought of as abnormal if they happen to also be symptoms of a mental illness. This implies needing a biological test to be done to confirm that, but no physical tests to diagnose psychological abnormalities exist.

Cultural norms play a large role in…

defining abnormality because they have “rules” (for example, gender-role expectations)

Cultural relativism is the idea that…

certain behaviors are abnormal in cultural norms. However, there are no rules for labeling a behavior abnormal and understanding what’s abnormal in one culture can be normal in another.

Culture and gender can influence…

expression of abnormality, willingness to admit behaviors, and treatments deemed acceptable

Biological Theories are…

the idea that abnormal behavior is similar to physical diseases, caused by the breakdown of systems in the body.

Supernatural Theories were…

abnormal behaviors from divine intervention, curses, demonic possession, or personal sin.

Psychological Theories are…

the ideas that abnormal behavior results from trauma, bereavement, or chronic stress

What are “Ancient Theories”?

Our understanding of prehistoric people’s conceptions of abnormality

What aer “evil spirits”? How did people “drive away” evil spirits?

The belief that there are supernatural causes of abnormal behavior treated via exorcism or trephination (when sections of the skull are drilled/cut to allow them to leave)

Ancient China: Balancing Yin and Yang was…

an abnormal behavior caused by an imbalance of positive (yang) and negative (yin), where emotions were believed to be controlled by internal organs. In a Taoist/Buddhist view, evil winds/ghost were thought to bewitch people, influencing their behavior.

Biological Theories dominated in ancient…

Egypt, Greece, and Rome, when people faced hysteria.

Today, people believe that in medieval times abnormal behavior was caused by…

severe emotional shock and physical illness or injury. But now we realize that treatment back then was to put people in asylums where they were mistreated.

Psychic epidemics are…

many people engaging in extremely unusual behaviors with psychological origin, like witchcraft in medieval times

What were morale treatments in the 18th and 19th centuries?

The Mental hygiene movement and the Morale treatment

The Mental Hygiene movement proposed…

that people fall ill when they are separated from nature, and that rapid social changes can create enough stress that mental illness manifests

What was the Moral treatment?

The movement that called for patients to live in humane conditions, but it failed because there weren’t enough staff per hospital, so they remained impaired, or their condition worsened.

Early 20th-century advances in scientific studies of disorders laid groundwork for new theories of abnormality like…

Biological Perspectives, Psychological Perspectives, and Social Perspectives

What happened in 1845?

Wilhelm Griesinger found that brain pathology leads to psychological disorders

Wilhelm Griesinger’s follower Emil Kraeplin…

was the first to classify different disorders by distinct symptoms

What is General Paresis? What is it caused by?

A disease that leads to paralysis, insanity, and death caused by a syphilis infection of the brain

Who was Franz Mesmer?

Focusing on hysterical disorders, he believed that abnormal behavior was caused by magnetic disturbance in the body. He’d wear elaborate robes and touch his patients, believing that through his touch he was “restoring the balance in their magnetic disturbances”

Who was Freud?

He invented Psychoanalytic Theory, the belief that abnormal behavior is caused by unconscious conflict. This lay the foundation for psychoanalysis, the study of the unconscious. He’d treat people with hypnosis or talking therapy to bring catharsis.

What did Breuer discover?

That patients venting under hypnosis led to a great upwelling and release of emotions- catharsis

What is behaviorism? Who are its key people? What about classical conditioning?

Ivan Pavlov created behaviorism, while Thorndike and Skinner continued his findings. They all found that abnormal behavior is caused by reinforcement and punishment. Classical conditioning is when a stimulus associates with fears, causing an abnormal response.

What did John Watson claim?

That if given a child, he could shape them into any sort of adult he wanted to.

What did Thorndike and B.F. Skinner claim?

That behaviors followed by positive consequences are more likely to be repeated than behaviors followed by negative consequences. This is called operant conditioning, centering around reinforcing or punishing behaviors.

What are the sub categories of cognitive approach? Who were its key people?

Cognitions and self-efficacy beliefs founded by Bandura, Ellis, and Beck

What was the patients’ rights movement?

The idea that mental patients recover better when they are integrated into the community

What is deinstitutionalization?

The integration of the mentally ill into the public with support from community-based treatment facilities.

What was the community mental health movement of 1963?

The providing of mental health services to people in community mental health centers.

What are halfway houses?

People with long-term mental health issues live in a structured, supportive environment; but there aren’t many built or funded.

What are day treatment centers?

They allow treatment during the day and for people to go home at night. The resources to care for all mental patients released from institutions aren’t usually adequate, though.

As Deinstitutionalization Led to Fewer People in Mental Hospitals…

Incarceration Rates in Prisons Increased Dramatically.

What are 3 general approaches of understanding psychological disorders?

The sociocultural approach, the biological approach, and the psychological approach

What is the sociocultural approach?

The idea that psychological disorders result from environmental conditions/cultural norms, people with this approach don’t think of their abnormalities as dysfunctional, viewing psychological disorders as labels that society puts on their abnormal behaviors.

What is the biological approach?

The idea that disorders result from abnormal genes/neurobiological dysfunction, and that mental illness is something you can completely have or don’t have at all.

What is the psychological approach?

The idea that disorders result from thinking processes, personality styles, emotions, or conditioning. This idea understands that cognition, learning, and emotional control can range from typical to dysfunctional.

What is a theory?

ideas providing a framework for asking questions about a phenomenon.

What is a therapy?

A treatment, usually based on a theory of a phenomenon, that addresses those factors the theory says cause the phenomenon.

What is the nature-nurture question?

“Is the cause of psychological problems something in the nature or biology of the person, or is in in the person’s nurturing history of events to which the person was exposed?”

What is the biopsychosocial approach?

Psychological symptoms result from a combination of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors

What is an example of a biological risk factor?

Genetic predisposition

What is an example of a psychological risk factor?

Difficulty remaining calm in a stressful situation.

What is an example of a sociocultural risk factor?

Growing up with the stress of discrimination based on ethnoracial factors.

When does a full-blow disorder emerge? What is this called?

Only when a risk factor and a trigger come together in an individual. This is called a diathesis-stres model.

What are the parts of the diathesis part of the diathesis-stress model?

a biological factor, a social factor, and a psychological factor

What are the parts of the stress part of the diathesis-stress model?

Biological trigger, social trigger, and a psychological trigger

What are the 3 main regions of the brain?

The hindbrain (posterior), the mindbrain, and the forebrain (anterior)

The hindbrain (posterior)…

has the medulla, pons, reticular formation, and the cerebellum

What does the cerebellum control? Where is it located?

It controls coordination and is located in the hindbrain (posterior)

What does the medulla do? Where is it located?

It controls breathing, circulation, and reflexes. It’s located in the hindbrain (posterior)

What do the pons control? Where are they located?

They control attentiveness/circadian rhythm/sleep/arousal and are located in the hindbrain (posterior)

What does reticular formation control? Where is it located?

The neurons that control arousal, attention to stimuli, and sleep. It’s located in the hindbrain (posterior)

The mindbrain…

has the superior colliculus/inferior colliculus and the substantia nigra.

What does the substantia nigra do? Where is it located?

It regulates responses to reward and is located in the mindbrain.

What do the superior colliculus/inferior colliculus do? Where are they located?

They both relay sensory information and control movement. They are in the mindbrain.

The forebrain (anterior)…

regulates complex activities like speech and analytical thinking and has the subcortical structures. These include the thalamus (vision/hearing), hypothalamus (hunger/thirst/temperature/sex/emotion), pituitary gland (regulates other endocrine systems), limbic system (stress/eating/sex), and cerebrum (its outer layer is called the cerebral cortex, and controls advanced thinking).

What are the right and left hemispheres of the brain connected by? Each hemisphere is divided into what four lobes?

Corpus collosum; the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes.

What is around the central core of the brain? What does it do?

Interconnected with the hypothalamus, the limbic system is a set of structures regulating instincts like reactions to stress, eating, and sex.

What is the amygdala?

The part of the limbic system controlling emotion.

What is the hippocampus?

A part of the limbic system that controls memory.

What are two structures of the forebrain?

The thalamus (directs incoming information from sense receptors to cerebrum) and the hypothalamus (eating/drinking/sex/emotion)

What is the limbic system?

It regulates reactions to stressful events and eating, involving the Amygdala (emotions) and the Hippocampus (memory)

What are neurotransmitters?

biochemicals that act as messengers carrying impulses from one neuron to another. Each has a cell body and branches called dendrites.

How do neurotransmitters receive impulses?

Their cell body and dendrites receive impulses from other neurons that travel down their axon to their synaptic terminal.

What is a synaptic gap (synapse)?

The gap between the synaptic terminal and the adjacent neuron.

What happens after the neurotransmitter is released into the synapse?

It binds to special receptors, which are molecules on the membrane of adjacent neurons.

What is reuptake?

When a neuron releasing a neurotransmitter into the synapse reabsorbs the neurotransmitter.

What is degradation?

When the recieving neuron releases an enzyme into the synapse that breaks down the neutrotransmitter into other biochemicals.

Psychological symptoms in the body arise when…

There are too many/few receptors/neurotransmitters, or their sensitivity increases/decreases

What is serotonin implicated in?

Depression, anxiety, and aggressive impulses.

What does dopamine do?

It’s associated with the experience of reinforcements or rewards and is affected by pleasurable substances (like alcohol) and behaviors (like sex).

What are two types of transmitters?

Norepinephrine and GABA

What is norepinephrine produced by?

Neurons in the brain stem; substances like cocaine and amphetamine prolong it by slowing the reuptake process.

What does GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid) do?

Inhibits the action of other neurotransmitters and tranquilizes certain drugs because they increase the inhibitory activity of GABA.

What is the endocrine system?

A system of glands that produce hormones (chemical mesengers affecting mood, energy, and reactions to stres) which release directly into the blood

What is the pituitary gland?

Controls hormones, working with the hypothalamus and adrenal glands in regulating stress responses.

Malfunctioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) causes…

anxiety and depression.

Chronic stress can cause what in what?

dysregulation in neurotransmitter and endocrine systems

What are behavioral genetics? What are the questions it asks?

The study of genetics involved with personality and abnormality; “to what extent are behaviors or behavioral tendencies inherited? What are the processes by which genes affect behavior?”

What do chromosomes contain?

individual genes (segments of long molecules of DNA)

What is a polygenetic process?

When multiple genetic abnormalities come together, creating a specific disorder. Most psychological disorders are polygenic. The more genes, the higher the risk.

Genes influence…

the type of environment and experiences people follow, both of which reinforce genetic tendency.

What are epigenetics?

Environmental conditions that instruct gene expression to turn on or off.

At conception, the normal fertilized embryo has how many chromosomes?

46 with 23 from the female egg and 23 from the male sperm, so 23.

An XX combination results in…

a female embryo; the mother of an embryo always contributes an X chromosome

An XY combination results in a…

a male embryo; the father can contribute either an X or a Y chromosome

What are alleles?

Coding sequences, every gene has two of them