Psychological Disorders Overview

14.1 Overview: Understanding Psychological Disorders

  • Clinical tools used by psychologists:

    • Diagnostic manuals (e.g., DSM)

    • Statistics/epidemiology

    • Biopsychosocial models

  • Psychological Disorder: A psychological Condition that varies from the norm, is usually maladaptive, and may cause personal distress.

  • Psychopathology: The science of diagnosing and understanding psychological disorders.

  • Medical model: Treat psychological disorders as illnesses requiring treatment.

  • Epidemiology: A science that requires the frequency of medical conditions

  • Biopsychosocial approach: Involves a consideration of biological, psychological, and social influences.

  • Etiology: Cause of a disorder

  • Diathesis-Stress Hypothesis: A hypothesis that suggests a condition can have a biological root or cause that is triggered by an environmental stressor.

  • Reciprocal-gene environment model: A model that suggests that established biological tendencies toward a condition can themselves cause stress, which in turn aggravates the condition, and then begins the cycle again (Stress ←→ Diathesis)

  • Criteria for diagnosing abnormal behavior:

    1. Deviance: Behavior that significantly deviates from cultural norms.

    2. Maladaptiveness: Behavior that interferes with everyday functioning.

    3. Personal distress: Behavior that generates significant personal distress.

  • Pros and cons of classification systems: Offers shorthand communication among professionals; however, labeling risks oversimplification and misdiagnosis.

14.2 Anxiety Disorders

  • Anxiety Disorders: Marked by feelings of nervousness, distress, and apprehension, disrupting daily activities. Typical categories include:

    • Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Characterized by excessive, uncontrolled worry.

    • Panic Disorder: Recurrent panic attacks along with fear of future attacks.

    • Agoraphobia: Fear of places where escape might be difficult.

    • Specific Phobias: Intense fears about particular objects/situations.

    • Social Phobia: Fear of embarrassment in social settings.

    • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Involves obsessions and compulsions.

    • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Anxiety related to trauma.

    • Social Anxiety Disorder: An anxiety disorder characterized by performance anxiety in nearly all types of social situations

    • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Associated with obsessions, or obsessions linked to compulsions

  • Panic attack: A period of intense fear or discomfort that is linked with specific physical and psychological symptoms.

  • Obsession: A thought that is unwanted, intrusive, and distressing.

  • Compulsions: A condition in which a person feels compelled to perform behaviors or mental actions in response to an obsession

  • Learning Perspective: A theory that suggests that anxiety disorders are learned behaviors.

  • Biological Perspectives:

    • Genetic predisposition, brain structure anomalies.

    • Neurotransmitters (e.g., GABA) implicated in conditions.

  • Learning Perspectives:

    • Anxiety disorders may be learned through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning.

    • Observational learning can cause anxiety in individuals who watch others react fearfully.

    • Cognitive factors suggest anxious individuals misinterpret benign situations as threatening.

14.3 Somatoform Disorders

  • Somatoform Disorders: Symptoms of physical illness unexplained by medical conditions.

  • Common types:

    • Somatization Disorder: Long-standing physical complaints with no medical cause.

    • Conversion Disorder: Psychological distress manifests as physical symptoms (e.g., paralysis).

    • Hypochondriasis: Persistent belief in having a severe illness based on misinterpretation of normal bodily functions.

  • Etiology: Involvement of psychological, cognitive, and contextual factors.

  • Malingering: A condition involving an external motivation for illness, such as avoiding a test.

  • Factitious disorder: A psychological disorder in which a person plays the sick role for emotional gain, sometimes called Münchausen syndrome.

  • Psychophysiological disorder: A disorder in which a real medical syndrome is exacerbated by psychological factors.

  • Somatization disorder: A type of somatoform disorder characterized by a long history of many vague physical complaints over several years.

14.4 Dissociative Disorders

  • Dissociative Disorders: Sudden loss of integration of consciousness or identity.

  • Key types:

    • Dissociative Amnesia: Loss of memory for personal information, often related to trauma.

    • Dissociative Fugue: Memory loss accompanied by travel and identity assumption.

    • Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): Presence of two or more distinct identities in a single individual.

  • Etiology: Coping mechanism amidst trauma, possibly reinforced by attention-seeking behavior.

  • Dissociation: A split of consciousness or attention into two or more separate streams.

14.5 Mood Disorders

  • Moods: Long-lasting, non-specific emotional states.

  • Anhedonia: A reduced capacity to feel pleasure.

  • Mania: A condition associated with an elevated, expansive, or sometimes irritable mood.

  • Major Depressive Disorder: Persistent, severe symptoms of depression impacting daily life.

  • Bipolar Disorder: Alternating episodes of mania and depression. Types include Bipolar I and Bipolar II.

  • Bipolar 1: A more severe form of bipolar disorder characterized by manic episodes that last at least seven days or by manic symptoms that are so severe that immediate hospital care is needed.

  • Bipolar 2: Characterized by a pattern of depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes, but no full-blown manic episodes.

  • Etiology:

    • Biological factors: Genetic links, neurotransmitter imbalances (monoamine hypothesis).

    • Social-Cognitive factors: Learned helplessness and cognitive distortions exacerbate mood disorders.

  • Hypomania: A condition in which a person has symptoms of mania but avoids getting into trouble.

  • Monoamine hypothesis of depression: A hypothesis that suggests that depressive symptoms are brought on by a malfunction of certain types of neurotransmitters

14.6 Psychotic Disorders

  • Psychotic Disorders: Severe impairments in perception of reality.

  • Notable disorder: Schizophrenia.

    • Symptoms include disorganized thinking, delusions, hallucinations, and negative symptoms (e.g., flat emotions).

  • Etiology: Complex interplay of genetic vulnerabilities, brain abnormalities, and environmental factors during development.

  • Schizophrenia: A psychological disorder characterized by disordered thinking, delusions, hallucinations, and disordered behavior and emotions.

  • Delusions: Beliefs that most people would think are incredible or impossible

  • Bizarre delusions: False and impossible beliefs

  • Non-bizarre delusions: False beliefs that are possible but highly unlikely.

  • Hallucinations: Sensory perceptions with no sensory input. The perceptions may affect any or all of the five senses

  • Agitated catatonia: A symptom of schizophrenia that is characterized by excessive motor activity and periods of inexhaustibility.

  • Stuporous catatonia: A symptom of schizophrenia that is characterized by restricted motor activity, such as periods of immobility and muscle rigidity

  • Positive symptoms of psychosis: Symptoms that are present in addition to typical psychotic behavior

  • Negative symptoms of psychosis: Symptoms of psychosis that involve behavior deficits, or expected behaviors that are absent.

  • Paranoid type of schizophrenia: A disorder characterized by highly structured non-bizarre delusions, coherent visual or auditory hallucinations, and feelings of persecution

  • Catatonic type of schizophrenia: A disorder characterized by one or both forms of catatonia, as well as other behavioral symptoms.

  • Disorganized type of schizophrenia: A schizophrenic disorder characterized by disorganized speech and behavior, a flat mood, and inappropriate emotions.

  • Undifferentiated type of schizophrenia: The presence of symptoms that meet the core criteria for schizophrenia but do not meet the criteria for paranoid, disorganized, or catatonic type

  • Dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia: A hypothesis that suggests that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a key role in schizophrenia

14.7 Personality Disorders

  • Personality disorder: A psychological condition, coded on Axis II of the DSM, that involves extreme, inflexible global personality traits that are chronic and pervasive

  • Ego syntonic: A psychological symptom that does not cause a person distress

  • Characteristics: Chronic, pervasive, and inflexible personality traits impacting daily functioning.

  • Ego syntonic: A psychological symptom that does not causea person distress

  • Common types:

    • Antisocial Personality Disorder: Disregard for social norms, lack of remorse.

    • Paranoid Personality Disorder: Distrust and suspicion of others.

    • Borderline Personality Disorder: Instability in mood and relationships.

  • Etiology: Genetic factors, brain structure anomalies, and early life experiences (e.g., trauma, neglect) play critical roles in the development of these disorders.