Psychometric Principles and Testing

• Psychology Student Syndrome - Psychology students studying abnormal behavior can also become convinced that they have some mental disorder  

  • Also you, as a psychology major, try to use what you have learned in class to "diagnose" someone of a psychological condition without full knowledge or proper certification

• Abnormal Psychology - The scientific study of abnormal behavior undertaken to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning 

  • Defining what is “normal” and “abnormal” is a subject of much debate

• Clinical Psychology - The applied field of psychology that seeks to assess, understand and treat psychological conditions in clinical practice

  • Psychologist - can’t prescribe meds, supports people through psychotherapy

  • Psychiatrist-can prescribe meds, identify disorders, generally works inside hospitals 

• Psychopathology - Scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences

  • Etiology - study and investigation into the root causes of a psychological disorder

• Defining what is “normal” and “abnormal” is a subject of much debate

  • Definitions of normality vary widely by person, time, place, culture, and situation

  • Although it is difficult to define “normal,” it is still important to establish guidelines in order to be able to identify and help people who are suffering

• The Four Ds

  • Deviant - abnormal behavior, thoughts, and emotions that differ markedly from a society’s ideas about proper functioning 

    • Different, extreme, unusual, perhaps even bizarre 

  • Distress - The person reports feeling pain and discomfort associated with his or her emotions, thoughts, or behaviors

  • Dysfunctional - Interfering with the ability to conduct daily activities in a constructive way 

    • People cannot care for themselves properly, participate in ordinary social interactions or work productively 

  • Danger - abnormal behavior becomes dangerous to oneself or others 

    • Individuals behavior is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk

    • This is the exception rather than the rule  

• (+) Diagnostic Labels - help health care professionals when communicating about establishing therapy and causes

  • Diagnostic Labels help health care professionals when communicating about establishing therapy and causes

  • (-) David Rosenhan (1973), once labeled, the label itself can determine not only how professionals perceive and react to a person but also how the labeled persons themselves will begin to act differently

    • Self-fulfilling prophecy 

    • Stigma

• Insanity - Legal term pertaining to a defendant's ability to determine right from wrong when a crime is committed

  • Concept discussed in court to help distinguish guilt from innocence

  • There’s not “insane” diagnosis listed in the DSM

• Model - Set of assumptions and concepts that help scientists explain and interpret observations (synonym-paradigm) 

• Today several models are used to explain and treat abnormal functioning 

  • Biological Model - View abnormal behavior as an illness brought about by the malfunctions parts of the organism, believe that the most effective treatments are biological ones 

    • Includes genetics, chemical imbalances in the brain, the functioning of the nervous system, etc.

  • Psychodynamic Model - Believe that a person’s behavior, whether normal or abnormal, is determined largely by underlying psychological forces of which he or she is not consciously aware

    • The forces interact with one another, abnormal symptoms are result of conflict between the forces 

  • Behavioral Model - Believe that our actions are determined largely by our experiences in life (response to environment) 

    • Stimulus, response and reward influence abnormal behavior 

    • 15% of today’s clinical psychologists report that their approach is mainly behavioral 

  • Cognitive Model - Cognitive processes are at the center of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions

    • Abnormal  behavior is caused by faulty and irrational cognitions

    • Individuals can overcome mental disorders by learning to use more appropriate cognitions

  • Eclectic Model - Broad-based approach, trusting a combination of established approaches to diagnose and treat individuals with psychological disorders

    • Most mental health professionals today do not rely exclusively on one approach

Brief History of Therapy

• Stigma - The societal disapproval and judgment of a person with mental illness because they do not fit their community’s social norms

• Effects of Stigma:

  • Refusal to receive treatment - stigma deters people from seeking help 

  • Social isolation - fear of “bringing them down” or “being a burden.” 

  • Distorted perception of the incidence of mental illness - leads to fewer diagnoses and fewer people getting help,  mental illness seems far less common than it actually is

• Trephining (Ancient Times) - Holes are drilled into a living person’s skull in order to release demonic spirits thought to be causing the person’s disordered behaviors 

  • Human skulls from as far back as five thousand years ago show treatment of trepanning 

  • Most people treated in this manner died

• Hippocrates, Ancient Greek Physician 500 B.C. - Believed that abnormal behavior was a disease arising from internal physical problems (imbalance of four fluids, or humors)

  • First recorded attempt to explain abnormal behavior as due to some biological process 

• Asylums - A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for persons with mental disorders

  • Once the asylums started to overflow, they became virtual prisons where patients were held in filthy conditions and treated with unspeakable cruelty

• Philippe Pinel - In the late 1700s, French physician, argued for more humane treatment of the mentally ill, brought reform in the way mental institutions would be run 

  • Patients should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings, Pinel unchained patients

  • Death rates for patients went from 60% to 10%

• Dorothea Dix - School teacher who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States from 1841 to 1881

  • Dix’s campaign led to new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders

  • Each state was responsible to develop mental hospitals or state hospitals

• Psychopharmacologic Revolution - Effective drugs for conditions like schizophrenia and depression were found in the 1950s by accident 

  • The antipsychotic chlorpromazine was first investigated as a drug that reduces allergies (sedative effects). Henri Laborit use it for patients going into surgery and encouraged  psychiatrists use it for psychosis

• Deinstitutionalization - When better psychotropic drugs were created this movement began to remove patients who were not considered a threat to themselves or the community from mental hospitals

  • Patients improve rapidly in familiar community settings 

  • In the 1960s Congress passed aid bills to establish community mental health facilities in neighborhoods in the U.S. 

Anxiety and Mood Disorders

• Anxiety Disorders - anxiety is the primary symptom or the primary cause of other symptoms for all anxiety disorders

  • Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder in the United States (19 million adults) 

  • People with one anxiety disorder usually experience another as well

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) - Experience excessive anxiety under most circumstances and worry about practically anything 

  • Feeling of “free-floating anxiety”

  • The anxiety has no definite trigger or starting point, they experience little relief

• Panic Disorder - anxiety disorder marked by recurrent and unpredictable panic attacks

  • Attacks of intense anxiety along with severe chest pain, tightness of muscles, choking, sweating, other acute symptoms during 

  • Symptoms can last a few minutes to a couple of hours (have no trigger)

• Specific Phobia - intense, irrational fear responses to specific stimu;i

  • Some people with a specific phobia may go to great lengths to avoid the phobic stimulus

  • When confronted with the object of their phobia, a person will generally enter a state of panic

• Agoraphobia - afraid to be in public situations from which escape might be difficult or help unavailable if panic-like or embarrassing symptoms were to occur  

  • Panic attacks in public places 

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - compound disorder of thought and behavior

  • Obsessions are persistent, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts that an individual cannot get out of his or her mind

  • Compulsions are ritualistic behaviors performed repeatedly

• Hoarding Disorder - characterized by persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items and distress parting with them 

• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - Result of some trauma experienced by the victim. Victims re-experience the traumatic event in nightmares about the event, or flashbacks in which they relieve the event

• Bipolar Disorder - mood swings alternating between periods of major depression and mania 

  • Rapid Cycling - is usually shorts periods of mania followed almost immediately by deep pression, usually for longer duration

• Major Depressive Disorder - involves intense depressive mood, reduced interest of pleasure in activities, loss of energy, and problems in making decisions for a minimum of two weeks

Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy

• Psychotherapy - psychologist or other trained professional working with an individual or group to identify a problem and develop solutions. Usually that process involves a lot of talking and thinking

• Confidentiality and the Law - Psychotherapists and psychiatrists are required by law to protect the confidentiality of their clients 

  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), sets limits on the way patient or client information can be shared

  • Therapists can break confidentiality when people are a threat to themselves or others (also court orders) 

• Behavior Therapy - the techniques used in this type of treatment are based on the theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning 

  • Goal is to extinguish unwanted behavior and replace it with more adaptive behavior

  • Behavioral therapy is action-based

• Exposure Treatments - Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy to treat anxiety disorders. Exposure therapy involves exposing the target patient to the anxiety source or its context without the intention to cause any danger

• Flooding - Exposing people to fear-invoking objects or situations intensely and rapidly

  • It is often used to treat phobias. During the process, the individual is prevented from escaping or avoiding the situation

  • Phobia is a learned fear, and needs to be unlearned by exposure to the thing that you fear

• Systematic Desensitization - Developed by Joseph Wolpe, a client makes a list of fears and then learns to relax while concentrating on these fears

  • Client learns to practice deep relaxation 

  • Client creates hierarchy of anxieties (lowest to highest stimulus) 

  • Led by the therapist, the client is introduced to the least feared object during deep relaxation then next, etc. 

• Aversion Therapy - Pairing an undesirable behavior with an aversive stimulus in the hope that the unwanted behavior will eventually be reduced

  • Unpleasant consequence will eventually stop the behavior 

  • Aversion therapy & flooding could be harmful if done carelessly

• Token Economy - Behavioral strategy relies on reinforcement to modify behavior. Clients are allowed to earn tokens that can be exchanged for special privileges or desired items 

  • Tokens: Items include poker chips, stickers, point tallies, or play money

  • Examples of typical target behaviors include self-care, medication adherence, work skills, and treatment participation

• Biofeedback - Mind-body technique that involves using visual or auditory feedback to gain control over involuntary bodily functions

  • Biofeedback is particularly useful for managing stress as well as symptoms of conditions that may be exacerbated by stress

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy - human emotions and behavior are predominantly generated by ideas, beliefs, attitudes and thinking

  • All of our feelings come from our thoughts

  • Almost all negative feelings come from distorted thoughts

  • We have Automatic thoughts that come into our head with little to no effort

• We tend to generate thinking errors when suffering conflict, poor stability, or stressful events

  • Black and White Thinking

  • Filtering out the Positive

  • Fortune-telling

  • Emotional Reasoning

  • Labeling

• Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) - Developed in 1950s by Albert Ellis, psychological problems arise when thoughts are irrational and lead to behavioral consequences that are distressful 

  • Restructuring, bring client's attention to the unrealistic thoughts

• Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy - Researched by Aaron Beck, based on the idea that how we think (cognition), how we feel (emotion) and how we act (behavior) all interact together

  • You will learn skills that help you change your thinking patterns so they are more accurate with respect to a given situation

Personality Disorders 

• Personality Disorders - Longstanding, maladaptive thought and behavior patterns that are troublesome to others, harmful, or illegal

  • Impair people’s social functioning, individuals do not experience anxiety, depression, or delusions

• Cluster A - Weird or Odd Behaviors seen in Schizophrenia

  • Paranoid Personality Disorder “Accusatory” - Pattern of distrust and suspiciousness about other people’s motives, individual thinks that others are out to threaten, betray, exploit, or harm

    • Do not normally confide in other people and frequently misread others

  • Schizoid Personality Disorder “Aloof” - Characterized by persistent avoidance of social relationships and little expression of emotion

    • Genuinely prefer to be alone, no effort to start of keep relationships

    • Withdrawn behavior, considered “cold” (more common in males)

  • Schizotypal Personality Disorder - characterized by extreme discomfort in close relationships, very odd patterns of thinking and perceiving, and behavioral eccentricities 

    • Patients usually experience distorted thinking and avoid intimacy

• Cluster B - Wild, Dramatic, or Emotional Behavior

  • Antisocial Personality Disorder - characterized by a general pattern of disregard for and violation of other people’s rights (closely linked to criminal behavior)

    • Used to be called sociopaths or psychopaths 

    • Violate other people’s rights without guilt or remorse

    • Manipulative, exploitive, self-indulgent, irresponsible (more common in males)

  • Borderline Personality Disorder - characterized by repeated instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and mood and by impulsive behavior

    • Unpredictable and prone to boredom (more common in females)

    • Always in conflict with the world around them, suicidal threats and actions are also common

  • Histrionic Personality Disorder - characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionally (dramatic) and attention seeking

    • Tend to overreact and be egocentric (more common in females)

    • Exaggerate physical illnesses, depth of their relationships

  • Narcissistic Personality - characterized by a broad pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy for others

    • Unrealistically self-important, manipulative, can’t take criticism, expects special treatment (more common in males)

• Cluster C - “Worried” Anxious or Fearful Behavior

  • Avoidant Personality Disorder - characterized by consistent discomfort or restraint in social situations, overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, and extreme sensitivity to navigate evaluation/potential rejection, humiliation

  • Dependent Personality Disorder - characterized by a pattern of clinging and obedience, fear of separation, and an ongoing need to be taken care of

    • Excessively lacking in self-confidence, subordinates own needs and allows others to make all decisions (more common in females)

  • Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) - Characterized by an intense focus on orderliness, perfectionism, and control that the person loses flexibility, openness, and efficiency 

    • Preoccupied with rules, schedules, details and extremely conventional 

Other Disorders

• Neurodevelopmental Disorders - groups of disabilities in the functioning of the brain that emerge at birth or during very early childhood and affect the individual’s behavior, memory, concentration and/or ability to learn

• Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) - Disorder marked by the inability to focus attention, or overactive and impulsive behavior, or both

  • ADHD can’t control their impulse to pay attention to something they shouldn’t 

  • Must have these patterns of behavior for 6 months to be diagnosed, and you must be under 12 to be diagnosed 

  • More common in boys than girls, but girls are also better at masking it

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) - disorder marked by extreme unresponsiveness to others, severe communication deficits, and highly repetitive and rigid behaviors, interests, and activities

  • More common in boys than girls, but girls are also better at masking it

• Intellectual Disability (ID) - disorder marked by intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior that are well below average

  • Previously called mental retardation

  • Low IQ score of 70 or below

  • Must be diagnosed before age 18 since it is developmental disorder

• Neurocognitive Disorder - group of disorders in which the primary problem is in cognitive function, impairments in cognitive abilities such as memory, problem solving, and perception

• Delirium - a rapidly developing, acute disturbance in attention, and orientation that makes it very difficult to concentrate and think in a clear and organized matter

  • Common in elderly people, state of massive confusion

• Alzheimer’s Disease - Fatal degenerative disease in which brain neurons progressively die, characterized by loss of memory, reasoning, emotion, and control of bodily functions

  • Alzheimer’s strikes 3 percent of the world’s population by age 75

  • Family history and genetics are looked at in diagnosis, but are not essential to diagnosis

  • Average life expectancy following diagnosis is three to nine years

  • As a person’s condition declines, they often withdraw from family and society. Gradually, bodily functions are lost

• Eating and Feeding Disorders - Mental disorders defined by abnormal eating habits. May involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual’s physical and mental health

  • People with eating disorders can appear underweight, of healthy weight, or overweight

  • More women than men get diagnosed with eating disorders

• Anorexia Nervosa (Anorexia) - life-threatening eating disorder that involves intense fear of weight gain or becoming overweight, distorted perception of one’s weight/body shape, persistent restriction of caloric intake

  • Body Dysmorphia - increasing cognitive misperception of being overweight despite evidence to the contrary

  • The risk of death is greatly increased in individuals with this disease (Anorexia has the highest fatality rate of any mental illness)

  • End of menstrual cycle leading to infertility, bone loss, loss of skin integrity, damage to heart and blood vessels, kidney damage, gastrointestinal damage, hair loss

• Bulimia Nervosa (Bulimia) - Recurrent binge eating followed by compensatory behaviors for the intake of food, such as purging 

  • Binging is characterized by eating a large amount of food in a short period of time

  • A purge can include self-induced vomiting, excessive use of laxatives/diuretics, fasting, or excessive exercise

  • People with bulimia tend to be of average or slightly above or below average weight

  • Diagnosis requires the episodes of compensatory behaviors and binge eating to happen a minimum of once a week for a consistent time period of 3 months

  • Complications due to bulimia are serious and can put your life at risk

• Binge Eating Disorder “Compulsive Overeating” - Uncontrollably eating a large amount of food in a short period of time; after a binging episode a person will not purge and will feel an extreme sense of guilt

  • Episodes of binging may be a method of self-soothing in the face of emotional stressors; social isolation and loneliness

Psychodynamic and Humanistic Therapy

• Insight Therapies - Designed to help clients understand the causes of their problems.  This understanding or insight will then help clients gain greater control over their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors 

  • Psychodynamic Therapies 

  • Humanistic Therapies

  • Gestalt Therapies 

• Psychoanalysis - The primary focus of psychodynamic therapy is to uncover the unconscious content of a client’s psyche in order to alleviate psychic tension

  • To resolve unconscious conflicts psychoanalysis involves going back to discover the roots of the problem

  • Traditional psychoanalysis, often required two or three session a week for up to seven years

• Free Association - The client spontaneously reports thoughts, feelings, and mental images that come to mind (no censorship) 

  • The psychoanalyst asks questions to encourage the flow of associations in order to provide clues as to what the patient’s unconscious wants to hide

  • As trust increases, ego will lower to reveal unconscious 

• Resistance “Mental Blocks” - The patient’s conscious or unconscious attempt to block disturbing memories, motives, and experiences (sensitive material)

  • The analyst will note your resistance and then provide insight into its meaning

• Transference - The process by which a patient projects or transfers unresolved conflicts and feelings onto the therapist

  • Freud believed that transference helps patients gain insight by reliving painful past relationships

  • The job of the therapist is to detect when transference is happening & help patient understand what it reveals 

• Psychodynamic Therapy - Evolved from Freud’s original approach, based on the ideas that a person’s development is often determined by forgotten events in early childhood, human behavior and dysfunction are largely influenced by the unconscious (neo-freudians)

  • Less expensive and extensive therapy

  • The relationship between client and therapist as an agent of change

• Humanistic Therapy - Aim to boost self-fulfillment by helping people grow in self-awareness and self-acceptance

  • The present and future more than the past

  • They explore feelings as they occur, rather than achieving insights into the childhood origins of the feelings

  • Conscious rather than unconscious thoughts

• Person-Centered (Rogerian-Therapy) - One of the most widely used models in psychotherapy today developed by Carl Rogers. 

  • Nondirective therapy - the therapist listens, without judging or interpreting, and seeks to refrain from directing the client toward certain insight

  • Client-centered therapy uses the following:

    • Unconditional Positive Regard - allow client to steer the direction of the therapy, clients have value

    • Empathy - ability to truly see, feel, & understand what client is experiencing 

    • Genuineness - therapist is willing to foster honest/open relationship

    • Active listening - therapist listens to client, paraphrasing what the client says, prevents advice or judgements 

      • Echoing, restating, and seeking clarification of what the person expresses (verbally or nonverbally) and acknowledging the expressed feelings

• Gestalt Therapy - Developed by Fritz Perls, therapists goal is to push clients to decide whether they will allow past conflicts to control their future or whether they will take control of their own destiny

  • Empty-chair technique in which a patient sits in front of an empty chair and imagines that the person to whom she/he needs to express his/her feelings is in the chair

• Group Therapy - In a small group, usually around 6 to 12, persons with similar problems come together under the direction or facilitation of a trained therapist or counselor to discuss their psychological issues 

  • Provides a vital element to mental healing: knowing you are not alone in suffering and struggles (reduces isolation and hopelessness) 

  • Enables therapist to treat more clients at same time, less expensive

• Self-Help Groups - Facilitator organizes meetings, but there is an absence of a trained psychotherapist directing the process of the group 

  • The responsibility for leading the group is up to the group members themselves

• Couples/Family Therapy - Trained professionals can direct spouses and family members to openly discuss their individual perspectives on the same issue

  • Understand how their behavior affects others

  • Practice better communication skills and bring about improved relationships

Schizophrenia and Other Disorders

• Somatic Symptom Disorders - Characterized by psychiatric symptoms associated with physical complaints

  • People primarily seen in medical settings where patients/clients complain of physical symptoms 

• Somatic Symptom Disorder (SDD) - Characterized by physical symptoms including pain, and high anxiety in these individuals about having a disease

• Illness Anxiety Disorder (IAD) - Characterized by a preoccupation with a serious medical or health condition with either no or mild physical (somatic) symptoms such as nausea or dizziness that has persisted for 6 months

• Conversion Disorder - Characterized by loss of some bodily function without physical damage to the affected organs or their neural connections

  • Symptoms usually last as long a anxiety is present

• Dissociative Disorders - Psychological disorders that involve a sudden loss or memory (amnesia) or change in identity

  • If extremely stressed, an individual can experience separation of conscious awareness from previous memories and thoughts

• Dissociative Amnesia - loss of memory for a traumatic event or period of time that is too painful for an individual to remember

  • Extreme vision is dissociative fugue (forget about personal identities and details of past lived, flee to new location)

• Dissociative Identity Disorder - rare mental disorder characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that recurrently control a person’s behavior

  • Common in people who have been victim of physical / sexual abuse when very young

• Schizophrenia - psychotic disorder in which personal, social, and occupational functioning deteriorate as a result of unusual perceptions, odd thoughts, disturbed emotions, and motor abnormalities

  • Literal translation is “split mind” which refers to a split from reality

  • Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (collective psychotic disorders)

• Psychosis “Syndrome” - any disorder in which the affected person has lost contact with reality (break with reality)

  • People usually experience psychosis in episodes (vary in length)

  • Psychosis can be drug induced or drug assisted (marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, crack & hallucinogens) 

  • Most common psychosis appears in the form of schizophrenia

• Positive Symptoms - Characteristics of schizophrenia that are added to a person’s personality, such as hallucinations, inappropriate emotions, delusions 

• Schizophrenia Delusions - Bizarre or far fetched belief(s) that are unchanging even after being proven incorrect

  • Delusions of Reference - Believing that hidden messages are being sent to you via newspaper, TV, radio, or magazines

  • Delusions of Grandeur - Believing you are someone very powerful or important, have special abilities, possessions, or powers 

  • Delusions of Persecution - Believing that spies, aliens, the government, or even your neighbors are plotting against you (most common)

• Schizophrenia Hallucinations - Perceiving a sensory stimuli that no one else is able to perceive, vividly real to the person experiencing it, content is usually negative

  • Seeing, feeling, tasting, or smelling things that are not there

  • Most frequently, people with schizophrenia hear voices that tell them what to do, warn of danger, or talk to each other about the individual

• Disorganized Speech/Thinking - combing thoughts or switching form one thought to another “word salad”

  • Rapidly shift from one topic to another, believing that their incoherent statements make sense

• Inappropriate Affect - emotions are unsuited to the situation

  • The emotions may be merely a response to other features of the disorder 

• Negative Symptoms - Characteristics taken away from a person’s personality; things that the individual does not do

  • In some cases, negative symptoms can be misinterpreted as depression or laziness

• Catatonia - A pattern of extreme psychomotor symptoms which may include catatonic stupor, rigidity, or posturing

  • Stupor - stop responding to their environment, remaining motionless and silent for a long period of time

  • Rigidity - maintain a rigid, upright posture for hours and resist efforts to be moved

  • Posturing - awkward bizarre positions for long periods of time

• Flat Affect - Withholding of emotions and exhibiting diminished emotional expression

  • Their faces are still, eye contact is poor and voices are monotonous 

  • May have general lack of pleasure or enjoyment

• Avolition - Apathy and an inability to start or complete a course of action 

  • People with schizophrenia may withdraw from their social environment and attend only to their own ideas and fantasies 

• Schizophrenia Etiology (Cause) - While genetics, environment, neurobiology, and psychosocial stress contribute to schizophrenia, the exact cause of the disease is unknown

• Genetic Link to Schizophrenia - strong genetic link to family members

  • People who have an identical twin with schizophrenia have a likelihood of getting it that is much higher (more than 40%) in comparison to about 1% of the general population

• Neurotransmitter Linked to Schizophrenia

  • Dopamine Hypothesis - High fluctuation of levels of dopamine can be responsible for schizophrenic symptoms

    • Potential link between high levels of dopamine and the development of schizophrenic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions

• Stress Link to Schizophrenia 

  • Diathesis-Stress Model - People inherit a predisposition or diathesis that increases their risk of schizophrenia; exposure to stress may put one at higher risk of developing schizophrenia

Biomedical Therapies 

• Biomedical Therapy - Based on the premise that the symptoms of many psychological disorders involve biological factors, involves medication and/or medical procedures to treat psychological disorders

  • In order to treat disorders, biomedical therapy uses drugs or brain stimulation in combination with psychotherapy 

• Psychopharmacology - The study of how psychotropic drugs affect mental processes and behavior

  • Medications used to treat psychological disorders are called psychotropic medications 

  • They do not cure the disorders; they only treat the symptoms (effectiveness is upwards of 80%)

  • The drugs are more effective when used in conjunction with psychotherapy

• Antianxiety Drugs (Anxiolytic) - Designed to reduce anxiety and produce relaxation by lowering sympathetic activity in the brain

  • Short term treatment of anxiety-antianxiety drugs, long term treatment of anxiety-antidepressant drugs 

• Antidepressant Drugs - Elevate mood by affecting neurotransmitters such as serotonin that are linked to depression

  • SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) – blocks the reuptake of serotonin

  • NDRI (norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors)

  • SNRI (serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) 

• Mood-Stabilizing Drugs - designed to treat the combination of manic episodes and depression characteristic of bipolar disorder because they reduce dramatic mood swings 

• Stimulants - Stimulate the central nervous system, stop the absorption of dopamine and norepinephrine and allow the brain to experience more stimulation

• Antipsychotic Drugs - Designed to diminish or eliminate positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, delusions, and other symptoms of schizophrenia

  • They work by decreasing activity at the dopamine receptors in the brain 

• Assessing Psychotropic Drugs - Psychotropic drugs are only prescribed after a careful diagnosis by a medical doctor 

  • All drugs carry the possibility of serious side effects

  • Psychotropic drug used in conjunction with psychotherapy is more effective in treating psychological disorders than a drug alone

• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) - A biological treatment in which a brain seizure is triggered as an electric current passes through electrodes attached to the patient’s forehead

  • The treatment is used on tens of thousands of depressed persons annually (those who fail to respond to other treatment)

• Psychosurgery/Neurosurgery - The most dramatic and least used biomedical intervention for changing behaviors, involves removing or lesioning brain tissue, process is irreversible

  • Bilateral anterior cingulotomy - involves inserting an electrode into the brain & carefully guiding it to specific neurons that connect frontal lobe and limbic system (small areas of selected brain cells are destroyed) 

• Deep Brain Stimulation - Treating severe cases of depression, thin wire is surgically implanted in the area of the brain associated with depression 

  • Wire is connected to battery to supply electric current that stimulates neuronal growth that appears to reduce symptoms of depression

• Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) - An alternative to ECT that involves placing a pulsating magnetic coil over the prefrontal regions of the brain, treats depression with minimal side effects

  • After repeated exposure to electromagnetic stimulation, specific neurons appear to grow in a way that reduce symptoms of depression

• Assessing the Biomedical Approach

  • Psychotropic drugs reduce the symptoms but do not cure the illness

• Increasing reliance upon such drugs first or only treatment. They become dependent on the drug to relieve the symptoms but psychotherapy treats the underlying psychological cause of the disorder