Psychological Disorders and Treatment Approaches

A collection of flashcards covering key terms and concepts related to psychological disorders and their treatments, as outlined in the lecture notes.

Distress

Emotional suffering or pain that may lead to difficulty in functioning.

Dysfunction

Impairment in the ability to perform daily activities.

Deviation

Behavior that is significantly different from societal norms.

7 Psychological Perspectives

The distinct lenses used to evaluate disorders: behavioral, biological, cognitive, evolutionary, humanistic, psychodynamic, and social-cultural.

Biopsychosocial Model

A model that considers biological, psychological, and social factors in understanding health and illness.

Medical Model

The concept that diseases (including mental disorders) have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through hospital treatment.

Diathesis-Stress Model

A psychological theory that proposes that a person may be predisposed for a mental disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress.

DSM-5-TR

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision; the standard American classification of mental disorders.

ICD

The International Classification of Diseases; a global diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management, and clinical purposes.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such.

Taijin Kyofusho

A Japanese culture-specific syndrome involving fear of offending others by one's gaze, facial expression, or body odor.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent unexpected panic attacks.

Ataque de Nervios

A cultural syndrome found among Latino individuals, typically involving screaming, crying, trembling, and verbal or physical aggression.

Agoraphobia

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

Specific Phobia

A persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.

Acrophobia

Fear of heights.

Arachnophobia

Fear of spiders.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

A disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions).

Obsession

Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are intrusive and cause distress.

Compulsion

Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that an individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession.

Hoarding Disorder

A disorder characterized by persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

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

Major Depressive Disorder

A mood disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and loss of interest.

Persistent Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia)

A chronic form of depression where a person experiences a mildly depressed mood more often than not for at least two years.

Rumination

Compulsive fretting; overthinking about our problems and their causes.

Bipolar I Disorder

A disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.

Bipolar II Disorder

A disorder in which a person alternates between extremely low depression and mild hypomania (not full mania).

Mania

A hyperactive, wildly optimistic state in which dangerously poor judgment is common.

Schizophrenia

A severe mental disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking.

Chronic Schizophrenia

A form of schizophrenia in which symptoms usually appear by late adolescence or early adulthood; as people age, psychotic episodes last longer and recovery periods shorten.

Acute Schizophrenia

A form of schizophrenia that can begin at any age, frequently occurs in response to an emotionally traumatic event, and has extended recovery periods.

Delusions

False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.

Hallucinations

False sensory experiences, such as seeing or hearing something in the absence of an external visual/auditory stimulus.

Catatonia

A state of motor immobility or excessive, purposeless motor activity; may involve remaining motionless for hours.

Dopamine Hypothesis

The theory that schizophrenia results from excessive activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities.

Dissociative Amnesia

Inability to recall important personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.

Dissociative Fugue

A symptom of dissociative amnesia where a person suddenly travels away from home or work and is unable to recall their past, sometimes assuming a new identity.

Cluster A Personality Disorders

Odd or eccentric behaviors; includes Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal personality disorders.

Cluster B Personality Disorders

Dramatic, emotional, or erratic behaviors; includes Antisocial, Histrionic, Narcissistic, and Borderline personality disorders.

Cluster C Personality Disorders

Anxious or fearful behaviors; includes Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorders.

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by calorie restriction leading to significantly low body weight and a distorted body image.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating (usually of high-calorie foods) with purging (by vomiting or laxative use) or fasting.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

Deinstitutionalization

Moving people out of psychiatric hospitals and back into closer contact with their families and community.

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 approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

Psychoanalysis

Freud's therapeutic technique; believes free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences release previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

Free Association

A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Resistance

In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.

Interpretation

In psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.

Transference

In psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

Psychodynamic Therapy

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

Person-Centered Therapy

A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients' growth.

Active Listening

Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies.

Unconditional Positive Regard

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

Behavior Therapy

Therapy that applies learning principles (classical and operant conditioning) to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.

Counterconditioning

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

Exposure Therapy

Behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid.

Systematic Desensitization

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

Aversive Conditioning

A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

Token Economy

An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.

Biofeedback

A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension.

Cognitive Therapy

Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

A confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

A form of CBT specifically designed for borderline personality disorder, focusing on mindfulness and emotional regulation.

Psychopharmacology

The study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

Antipsychotic Drugs

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder (e.g., Thorazine).

Antianxiety Drugs

Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation (e.g., Xanax).

Antidpressant Drugs

Drugs used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD (e.g., Prozac).

Lithium

A chemical element used as a mood-stabilizing drug for bipolar disorder.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

The application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A medical treatment that involves sending small electrical currents through the brain to treat severe depression.

Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.

Lobotomy

A psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients by cutting the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.