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Psychological disorder
A clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior that is usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, and other important activities.
Syndrome
A cluster of physical or mental symptoms that are typical of a particular condition or psychological disorder and that tend to occur simultaneously.
Symptom
A physical or mental feature that may be regarded as an indication of a particular condition or psychological disorder.
psychopathology
(1) the scientific study of psychological disorders, or (2) the disorders themselves.
Abnormal psychology
Seeks to characterize the nature and origins of psychological disorders
Clinical psychology
assessment and treatment of psychological disorders
To qualify as a disorder, a syndrome must not be
a. An expectable response to common stressors and losses,
b. A culturally approved response to a particular event
c. A simple deviance from social norms.
Point prevalence
The percentage of people in a given population who have a given psychological disorder at a particular point in time.
Lifetime prevalence
The percentage of people in a certain population who will have a given psychological disorder at any point in their lives.
Clinical assessment
A procedure for gathering the information that is needed to evaluate an individual’s psychological functioning and to determine whether a clinical diagnosis is warranted.
Clinical interview
Where a clinician asks the client to describe their problems and concerns.
Self-report measure
A standardized clinical assessment tool that consists of a fixed set of questions that a patient answers.
Projective tests
When a person responds to unstructured or ambiguous stimuli; is thought that responses reveal unconscious wishes and conflicts.
International classification of diseases (ICD-11)
Used to classify the diseases and health problems recorded in health records and death certificates.
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5)
Used as the standard guide on mental disorders in the US. Guides most research on psychological disorders.
benefits of diagnostic labels
Improves treatment and facilitates research
Costs of diagnostic labels
Creates stigma and encourages researchers/clinicians to think of a psychological disorder as “fixed.”
Diathesis-stress model
A conception of psychopathology that distinguishes the factors that create a risk of illness from the factors that turn the risk into a problem.
Learned helplessness
A state of passive resignation to an aversive situation that one has come to believe is outside of one’s control.
Neuroticism
A personality dimension associated with heightened levels of negative affect.
Biopsychosocial model
A way of understanding what makes people healthy by recognizing that biology, psychology, and social context all combine to shape health outcomes.
Anxiety
A feeling of intense worry, nervousness, or unease. The main symptom of this class of disorders.
Specific phobia
A marked fear of or anxiety about a particular object or situation, such as snakes, bridges, lightning, dentists, or blood.
Social anxiety disorder
A disorder characterized by extreme fear of being watched, evaluated, and judged by others.
Panic disorder
A disorder characterized by the occurrence of unexpected panic attacks
Panic attack
Sudden episodes of uncontrollable fear or anxiety accompanied by terrifying bodily symptoms
Agoraphobia
A fear of being in situations in which help might not be available or escape might be difficult of embarrasing.
Generalized anxiety Disorder
A disorder characterized by continuous, pervasive, and difficult-to-control anxiety.
Obsessions
A recurrent unwanted or disturbing thought
Compulsions
A ritualistic action performed to control an obsession.
Mental rituals
Compulsions that have no visual signs
Trauma and stressor related disorders
Disorders that are triggered by an event that involves actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violation.
Dissasociation
When someone feels wholly alienated, socially unresponsive, and oddly unaffected by the event.
Intrusive symptoms
Can include recurrent nightmares and waking flashbacks of a traumatic event.
Arousal symptoms
When someone maintains a high state of readiness to guard against harm. Includes sleep disturbances, agitation, restlessness, difficulties with concentration, and a state of pervasive hypervigilance.
Avoidance symptoms
When someone tries to avoid thoughts, activities, people, objects, or locations that relate to a traumatic event.
Negative alterations in cognition and mood
Includes outbursts of anger, loss of interest in things that were once pleasurable, or survivors guilt.
Acute stress disorder
A trauma- or stressor-related disorder than lasts less than one month.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
A trauma- or stressor-related disorder that lasts one month or longer.
Comorbidity
The occurrence of two or more disorders in a single individual at a given point in time.
General risk factors
Make someone vulnerable to more than one anxiety disorder
Specific risk factors
Make someone vulnerable to one of the anxiety disorders but not the others
Concordance rate
The probability that a person with a particular familial relationship to a patient (for example, an identical twin) has the same disorder as the patient.
Amygdala and insula
Brain areas associated with phobias
Vicarious learning
When what we learn from others may create a psychological diathesis for a specific phobia
Mood related disorders
Disorders that involve prominent disturbances in a person’s positive and negative feeling states.
Major depressive disorder
A disorder characterized by feelings of sadness, emptiness, and anhedonia.
Anhedonia
Diminished interest or pleasure in nearly all of the activities that usually provide pleasure, such as eating, exercising, or spending time with friends.
Rumination
The process of repetitively turning emotional difficulties over and over in the mind.
Psychotic delusions
Unshakable false beliefs
Bipolar disorder
A disorder characterized by manic episodes, often in addition to depressive episodes.
Hypomania
Marked by high spirits, happiness, self-confidence, and a high level of nervous energy.
Mania
A state of high excitement and energy often characterized by racing thoughts, a feeling of invincibility or omnipotence, and a lack of boundaries or inhibitions.
Serotonin
People who die by suicide have low levels of this
Norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin
Three neurotransmitters associated with mood-related disorders
Negative cognitive schema
A mental framework in which a person consistently interprets events negatively
Explanatory style
How a person explains why bad things happen to him or her.
Schizophrenia
A psychological disorder characterized by a loss of contact with reality and a breakdown of the normal functions of the mind, leading to bizarre perceptions.
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia
Behaviors that are not present in healthy people
Delusions
False beliefs that are rigidly maintained despite overwhelming contradictory evidence.
Delusions of persecution
When patients are convinced that they are being singled out for punishment or death
Delusions of reference
When patients are convinced that some neutral environmental event is somehow directed at them
Hallucinations
Sensory experiences that occur in the absence of any sensory input or stimulation.
Disorganized behavior
Unusual actions that are not usually seen in healthy individuals.
Negative symptoms
An absence of behaviors usually seen in healthy people.
Dopamine hypothesis
The hypothesis that schizophrenia arises from an abnormally high level of activity in brain circuits that are sensitive to this neurotransmitter
Classical antipsychotics
Block the D2 receptor for dopamine
Enlarged ventricles and loss of grey matter
Structural abnormalities related to schizophrenia
A mother’s exposure to infection or malnutrition
Non-genetic risk factor of schizophrenia
Neurodevelopmental disorder
A disorder that stems from early brain abnormalities
Civil commitment laws
Laws that specify when people can be hospitalized against their will for mental treatment
Commitment is usually permitted when (1)
Individuals have a mental illness
Commitment is usually permitted when (2)
They are either a danger to themselves or others or are unable to care for themselves.
Not guilty by reason of insanity
A modern legal concept that holds that people are not responsible for criminal behavior if at the time of that behavior they had a mental disorder that left them substantially unable either to understand that what they were doing was wrong or to behave as they knew they should.
Criminal commitment
Enforced hospitalization for criminals who plead not guilty by reason of insanity
Autism spectrum disorder
involves a wide range of developmental problems, including (1) persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and (2) restricted or repetitive patterns of interest or behavior.
A cardinal feature of autism
Substantial deficits in social communication
Theory of mind
The ability to represent others as individuals who have their own unique thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Something that people with autism might lack.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
A disorder usually diagnosed in young children that involves a wide range of symptoms, including blurting out answers in class, fidgeting, and difficulty in shifting attentional focus.
methylphenidate
The stimulant most often used to treat ADHD
Dissociative identity disorder (DID)
defined by the presence of two or more distinct personality states within a single person, each with its own style, habits, beliefs, and memories.
Interidentity amnesea
The partitioning of memory in different identities
Posttraumatic model of DID
When a child dissociates to cope with serious trauma
Sociocognitive model of DID
When a client responds to a therapist’s suggestions and to widespread cultural conceptions of DID.
Personality disorder
A pattern of behavior and inner experience that (1) deviates markedly from cultural norms and expectations, (2) is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations, and (3) leads to clinically significant distress or impairment.
Paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal
Personality disorders characterized by odd or eccentric behavior
Antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic
Personality disorders characterized by dramatic or emotional behavior
Avoidant, dependant, and obsessive-compulsive
Personality disorders characterized by heightened levels of fear or anxiety
Antisocial personality disorder
marked by a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, as well as a lack of empathy and remorse.
