(2025) U5 AP Psychology Unit 5 Mental and Physical Health

Chapter 16: Health Psychology

Key Terms

Eustress: stress that is positive and motivating

Distress: stress that is negative and debilitating

Stressors: can refer to certain life events or how we react to these changes in environment.

General adaptation syndrome (GAS): describes the general response humans or other animals have to stressful events.

Alarm reaction: where our heart rate increases, blood is diverted to muscles in the body that are needed for the reaction. Activation of sympathetic nervous system.

Resistance: body remains physiologically ready, hormones are released to maintain this state of readiness. If the stage lasts too long, our body can deplete its resources.

Exhaustion: Parasympathetic nervous system returns physical state to normal, we can be more vulnerable to disease in this stage, especially if resources were depleted during resistance.

Hypertension: a heart condition that involves having high blood pressure

Immune suppression: decreasing the body’s ability to produce white blood cells and fight infection.

Tend-and-befriend theory: stress management through seeking social connection and tending to self care needs.

Emotion-focused coping: stress management through specific techniques such as mindfulness/meditation or combining them with prescribed medication.

Positive psychology: investigates how humans can achieve happiness and maximize their potential while still committing to supporting it’s theories through empirical evidence.

Happiness

Subjective well-being: sense of how satisfied one is with their own life

Virtues: Six core values that are notable across all major religions and cultures.

Wisdom: associated with the ability to use information gained in a creative manner, being open-minded and retaining curiosity.

Courage: Described as including persistence, integrity and bravery

Humanity: Described as a kindness, interest, and appreciation towards others.

Justice: involves striving to be a socially responsible citizen of the world, and striving to improve it.

Temperance: means moderation, encourages self control.

Transcendence: involves seeing beyond oneself and valuing their connection with the world

Well-being: an overall perception of the quality of our lives, how well we fit in certain roles and how effectively we function in certain aspects of our lives.

Gratitude: process of expressing thankfulness toward others in writing or verbally.

Resilience: the ability to successfully adapt to stressors, maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adversity.

Post-traumatic growth: ability to construct a meaningful experience in response to a past period of trauma.

Measuring Stress

• Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe designed one of the first instruments to measure stress

  • Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) measured stress using life change units

    • person would report major life changes and it would be measured bye LCU

    • The higher the SRRS score, the more likely a person is to have stress related diseases

    • Different events had different assigned LCU’s

• Other researchers have now designed more precise and sophisticated methods of stress measurement

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• our response pattern may to different physical and emotional stressors is consistent

Perceived control

• perceived lack of control over events tends to make it appear more stressful

Positive Psychology

• Studies indicate some people adapt more effectively when faced with trauma and stress

  • people may experience post traumatic growth after intensely negative experiences.

Chapter 17: Psychological Disorders

Key Terms:

Dysfunction: When a disorder disrupts a person’s ability to live their life properly

Distress: When a disorder causes stressful emotions in your own and the lives of others.

Deviance: When a disorder causes behavior that is unusual or different from that of a population.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): contains the symptoms of everything currently considered to be a psychological disorder

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (before the age of 18) and can have long-term effects on a person's health, well-being, and development.

Maladaptive learned associations: refer to connections between stimuli, behaviors, or thoughts that are learned through experience but are dysfunctional or harmful in the long run.

Sociocultural perspective: notion that social ills like racism, sexism, ageism, poverty and discrimination that results from these prejudices, lie at the heart of the psychological disorders.

Racism: discrimination against someone based on their skin color or ethnicity.

Sexism: discrimination, prejudice or stereotyping against someone based on their sex.

Ageism: discrimination, prejudice or stereotyping against someone based on their age.

Discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability.

Biological perspective: sees psychological disorders as caused by biological factors like neurotransmitter imbalances, difference in brain structure and hormonal imbalances.

Biopsychosocial view: problems likely result from the interplay of biological, psychological and social factors.

Diathesis-stress model: environmental stressors can provide circumstances under which a biological predisposition for illness can express itself.

Stressors:

Eclectic: accepting and using ideas from a number of different perspectives.

Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective: perspective that state the cause of the disorder is internal or caused by unconscious conflicts

Humanistic perspective: perspective that states the cause of the disorder to be failure to strive toward one’s potential or being out of touch with one’s feelings.

Behavioral perspective: perspective that state the cause of the disorder to be reinforcement history or the environment.

Cognitive perspective: perspective that state the cause of the disorder to be irrational, dysfunctional thoughts or ways of thinking.

Sociocultural perspective: perspective that state the cause of the disorder to be dysfunctional societies.

Biological/biomedical perspective: perspective that state the cause of the disorder to be genetic predispositions and neurotransmitter imbalances.

Autism spectrum disorder: people seek out less social and emotional contact, are more sensitive to sensory information and have interest in objects not typically viewed as interesting.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder(ADHD): people who tend to hyperfocus on things of interest to them, sometimes children may have difficulty sitting still or paying attention.

Anxiety disorders: disorders that share a common symptom of anxiety.

Specific phobia: an intense unwarranted fear of a situation or an object.

Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders

Agoraphobia: the fear of open, public spaces.

Social anxiety disorder: in which people are afraid of a certain situation wherein they could embarrass themselves in public.

Taijin kyofusho: a type of social anxiety involving concern over whether one’s body is displeasing to others.

Generalized anxiety disorder: disorder involving a feeling of constant, low-level anxiety. Constantly feeling nervous and out of sorts.

Panic disorder: suffers from acute episodes of intense anxiety without any apparent provocation.

Panic attacks: episodes of extreme panic, usually causing shortness of breath, increased heart rate and dizziness. It often occurs without any triggers and can also cause feelings of impending doom and danger, even when none is present.

Ataque de nervios: how panic attacks are referred to in Caribbean cultures

Acrophobia: fear of heights

Dissociation: involves a break or separation from memories, thoughts or even a sense of who the person is.

Dissociative amnesia: when a person cannot remember things and there’s no physiological cause for it.

Dissociative identity disorder: when a person has several personalities rather than one integrated personality.

Dissociative disorders: Disorders that are believed to result when an extremely traumatic event has been so thoroughly repressed that a split in consciousness results.

Major depressive disorder: most common mood disorder, symptoms being loss of appetite, depressive episodes, etc.

Persistent depressive disorder: when depression is long lasting, but not as severe.

Learned helplessness: when one’s prior experiences caused that person to believe that they are unable to control aspects of the future that they actually can control.

Bipolar disorder: disorder involving both depressed and manic episodes.

Bipolar I disorder: a type of bipolar disorder that involves a high level of mania that last over days.

Bipolar II disorder: a type of bipolar disorder the involves experiencing at least one episode of hypomania, which is a less extreme level of mania and spans over less time.

Mania: periods of great excitement, delusions and overactivity.

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a debilitating psychological disorder involving disordered and distorted thinking, often through hallucinations.

Disorganized thinking/speech: when thoughts and speech are jumbled together and are nonsensible

Disorganized motor behavior: when behavior is erratic and

Delusions: beliefs that have no basis in reality

Delusions of persecution: the belief that people are out to get you

Delusions of grandeur: the belief that you hold more power and influence than you actually do.

Hallucinations: perceptions made in the absence of any sensory stimulation.

Word salad: odd use of language such as stringing together a string of nonsense rhyming words, making up words, etc.

Flat affect: evidence of schizophrenia involving a lack or no emotional response at all in a situation.

Schizophrenia: a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, and flat or inappropriate affect.

Catatonia: may involve repetitive or purposeless overactivity, or catalepsy, resistance to passive movement, and negativism.

Positive symptoms: a symptom of schizophrenia involving an EXCESS in behavior, thought, or mood such as neologisms and hallucinations.

Negative symptoms: symptom of schizophrenia involving a DEFICIT in behavior such as flat effect or catatonic stupor.

Dopamine hypothesis: theory that high levels of a certain neurotransmitter is associated with schizophrenia.

Cluster A: associated with suspicious or eccentric behaviors including paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders

Paranoid: when a person is overly suspicious and mistrustful of another without any clear reason.

Schizoid: condition where a person shows very little, if any, interest and ability to form relationships with other people

Schizotypal personality disorders: when a person exhibits eccentric behaviors transient psychosis, odd belief patterns; associated with schizophrenia

Cluster B: associated with impulsive or emotional tendencies including borderline, antisocial, narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders.

Borderline personality disorders: a disorder marked by fear of abandonment, unstable mood and thought processes which can lead to unstable relationships.

Antisocial personality disorder: a disorder in which people who have little regard for the world, view it as hostile and where they need to look out for themselves.

Narcissistic personality disorder: a disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a diminished ability to empathize with other people's feelings.

Histrionic personality disorder: a disorder that connotes overly dramatic behavior.

Cluster C: associated with anxiety, includes avoidant, dependent and OCD

Avoidant personality disorder: people are plagued with feelings of inadequacy, leading them to avoid social situations and be sensitive to feedback.

Dependent personality disorder: people who rely too much on attention and validation from others.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: invovles being overly concerned with certain thoughts and behaviors; tendency towards perfectionism

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): when persistent unwanted thoughts result in compulsions to engage in a particular action.

Obsessions: persistent, unwanted thoughts

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): involves flashbacks or nightmares following involvement in a severely troubling/traumatic event.

Anorexia nervosa: an eating disorder in the form of self-starvation

Bulimia: an eating disorder that involves a binge-purge cycle, where sufferers eat large quantities of food and attempt to purge by throwing up or using laxatives.

Substance-related and addictive disorders: disorder diagnosed when behaviors like gambling or use of substances negatively affects a person’s life regularly.

Defining Psychological Disorders

• often characterized as being different from what is typical, behaviors that cause distress and dysfunction

Different perspectives on the causes of Psych Disorders

• Psychodynamic

  • Internal, unconscious conflicts

• Humanistic

  • Failure to strive toward one’s potential or being out of touch with one’s feelings

• Behavioral

  • Reinforcement history, the environment

• Cognitive

  • Irrational, dysfunctional thoughts or ways of thinking

• Sociocultural

  • Dysfunctional Society

• Biological/Biomedical

  • Genetic predispositions, hormonal imbalances

Neurocognitive Disorders

• ASD

  • Children with Autism spectrum disorder seek out less social and emotional contact than others, and are less likely to seek out parental support when distressed

  • hypersensitive to sensory stimulation

  • often exhibiting intense interest in seemingly plain objects, engaging in repetitive behaviors

    • flipping things

    • rubber bands

• Other neurodevelopmental disorders involve difficulties in developing skills

• ADHD

  • Children with ADHD have difficulty paying attention or sitting still

  • Tend to hyperfocus on things of interest

  • ADHD is diagnosed more frequently in boys, as the active behavior is typically seen in them is hence over diagnosed

  • Underdiagnosed in girls who may sit quietly in classrooms but still struggle to focus on the teachers’ lessons

Anxiety Disorders

• Share a common symptom of anxiety

• Phobias

  • characterized as anxiety disorders because the fear of having contact with the feared object or situation results in anxiety

• Social Anxiety Disorder

  • fear of a situation in which one could embarass oneself in public

  • Sociocultural impacts on disorders are shown by different disorders appearing in different ways across cultures

• GAD

  • Low-level anxiety but is constant

• Panic Disorder

  • Panic attacks are often brought upon from feelings of lack of control and impending doom, often without a trigger but can increase frequency and escalate fast.

  • intense episodes of anxiety that are acute without any apparent trigger

Theories on Causes of Anxiety Disorders

• Psychodynamic Theorists

  • say anxiety disorders are a result of unresolved internal conflict between the id, superego and ego

  • anxiety could be an outward manifestation of it

• Behaviorists

  • say that all behavior is learned, so assert that anxiety disorders are learned.

  • Through operant, classical conditioning or other cognitive learning

• Cognitive Theorists

  • disorders result from dysfunctional ways of thinking

  • attributes anxiety disorders to poor thought patterns or a bad specific thought.

Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders

• Occur when a person manifests a psychological problem through a physiological symptom

  • Example: Conversion disorder

    • People with conversion disorder report the existence of a severe physiological symptom like paralysis or blindness, and they will be unable to move there arms or see even if they are perfecty capable

Theories on Cause of Somatic Disorders

• Psychodynamic Theorists: Outward manifestations of unresolved unconscious conflicts

• Behaviorists: Behavior/ symptoms are being reinforced

  • not being able to see means not having to work so behavior is reinforced

Dissociative Disorders

• involves disruption in conscious processes

• Different personalities in DID can be of different ages, sexes, etc. Often, 2 personalities will be opposites of the other

  • People with DID have a common history of sexual abuse or other childhood trauma

Theories on cause

Psychodynamic Theorists

• Results when a traumatic experience has been seriously repressed

Behaviorists

• believe that people find reward in not thinking about their traumatic experiences, leading to splits in consciousness or amnesia

Depressive Disorders

• People who are clinically depressed remain unhappy for more than 2 weeks, without a clear reason

• Symptoms can include: depressive episodes, lack of appetite, fatigue, changes in sleep patterns, lack of interest

• Seasonal Depression (SAD) is often diagnosed to people who experience depression during a certain season (usually winter)

  • treated with light therapy

Theories on Causes of Depressive Disorders

Psychodynamic Theorists

• View depression as a product of anger directed inward, or an overly punitive superego

Learning Theorists

• View the disorder as something that brings about reinforcement like attention or sympathy

  • Aaron Beck - Cognitive Theorist

    • believed depression results from unreasonably negative ideas that people have about themselves

• Looks at the way we attribute experiences

  • Pessimistic attribution seems to promote depression more

    • Example: Jonas failed a math test

      • He attributes it to something Internal (i am bad at math) or External (the class is hard) / Global (i am bad at all subjects)/ Unstable ( i had a bad day) Stable ( i will always be bad at math)

    • People who tend to make internal, specific, and unstable attributions for bad events are more likely to be depressed

• Depression correlates with feelings of learned helplessness

• Biological components to mood disorders exist

  • low levels of serotonin are linked to major depressive disorder

  • People who are bipolar have more receptors for acetylcholine

• Mood and Bipolar disorders have genetic components

Bipolar and Related Disorders

• Involves both depressed and manic episodes

• Either experience heightened sense of confidence and power, or a sense of irritability and anxiety.

• Often feel inflated sense of well-being, yet still engage in risky behaviors, with negative consequences.

• Small amount of people experience mania without depression

• Same symptoms as depression ( for depressive aspect)

Schizophrenia Spectrum

• tend to strike young adults

• main symptoms are disordered thinking, speaking, motor behavior along with hallucinations and delusions

• Often, evidence use of odd language by making it up, or pulling a string of words together because they rhyme

• Catatonic stupors, flat effect

  • May appear motionless for hours at a time in strange postures, move jerkily and quickly for no apparent reason

• Schizophrenia is a break from reality, while DID is a break from consciousness

THEORIES ON CAUSE

• High levels of dopamine are associated with Schizophrenia

  • antipsychotic drugs used to treat it, result in lower dopamine and decrease some symptoms but have adverse effects

  • L- Dopa can cause schizophrenic-like distortions, its used for Parkinson’s treatment

• Genetic predispositions

  • People who are related to those with the disorder are at higher risk, and experience it intensely

• enlarged brain ventricles, brain asymmetries

• Existence of double binds could be a psychological cause

  • when a person is given contradictory messages

  • Sally’s parents constantly berate her about her grades, but also about why she doesn’t have more friends.

Personality Disorders

• Typically manifest in early adulthood or adolescence and remain throughout life

• Cluster A: more suspicious and distant from others, associated with eccentric or suspicious behaviors

  • Paranoid: Marked by a pattern of mistrust and being overly suspicious of people without any reason

  • Schizoid Personality Disorder: a condition where a person shows very little, if any, interest and ability to form relationships with other people.

  • Schizotypal: involves eccentric behavior, odd beliefs, and transient psychotic-like symptoms

  • Schizoid focuses on lack of interest or ability to form relationships while schizotypal is associated with behavior and odd beliefs

• Cluster B

  • Antisocial PD: have little regard for people’s feelings, view the world as hostile and as a place where they have to look out for themselves

  • Borderline Personality Disorder: results in unstable relationships; people with it often have a fear of abandonment and switch on their feelings for others

  • Narcissistic PD: invovles seeing onself as the center of the universe

  • Histrionic PD: Connotes Dramatic behavior

• Cluster C

  • Avoidant PD: Plagued by feelings of inadequacy, leading them to withdraw from social situations and be sensitive to feedback

  • Dependent PD: overly reliant on outside validation and attention. Often feel incapable of taking care of themselves

  • Obsessive Compulsive PD: overly concerned with certain thoughts and behaviors; tendency for perfectionism

Obsessive Compulsive & Related

• When persistent, unwanted thoughts can cause someone to feel the need to engage in a particular action.

  • commonly concerned with cleanliness

  • Obsessions result in anxiety, reduced by performing compulsions

• Related disorders are hoarding disorders and body dysmorphic disorder, along with PTSD

Paraphillic Disorders

• Psychosexual disorders marked by feeling sexual attraction to things usually not seen as sexual

  • Pedophilia, zoophilia, fetishism.

  • Masochists are aroused by pain being inflicted on themselves

  • Sadists become aroused by inflicting pain on someone else

Feeding and Eating Disorders

Anorexia Nerviosa:

• Self starvation

• Common in young girls

Bulimia

• Binge-Purge process

• Don’t lost much of their weight

• Fear of food and distorted body image

Binge Eating Disorder

• Most commonly occurring

• involves eating large quantities of food in a short time

Chapter 18: Treatment of Psychological Disorders

Psychodynamic therapy: type of therapy that focuses on unconscious processes as they are manifested in the client's present behavior.

Hypnosis: an altered state of consciousness, in which psychoanalysts believe people are less likely to repress troubling.

Free associate: technique involving asking the patient to say whatever comes to mind without thinking.

Dream interpretation: accessing and interpreting subconscious through dreams, since it’s theorized that the ego.

Person-centered therapy: therapeutic method involving providing the client with unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard: blanket acceptance of someone, regardless of what they say or do.

Active listening: involves encouraging talk about feelings and mirroring back those feelings to help clarify them.

Applied behavior analysis (ABA): systems of reinforcement in place to help teach clients to be successful in the world, usually for people with developmental disorders.

Counterconditioning: a method of classical conditioning where an unpleasant stimulus is replaced with a pleasant one.

Systematic desensitization: therapeutic approach combining relaxation techniques with exposure to overcome a phobia or anxiety.

Anxiety or fear hierarchy: ordered list of what a client fears, increasing in intensity.

Exposure therapies: a form of therapy involving some degree of contact with the feared stimuli, in an attempt to realize the irrationality of the fear by facing it.

Aversive therapy: pairing a habit a person wishes to break, with an unpleasant stimulus.

Token economy: desired behaviors are rewarded with tokens which can be exchanged for various things.

Cognitive restructuring: goal of cognitive therapy involving challenging people’s way of thinking.

Maladaptive thinking: a way of thinking that is false and irrationally unsupported.

Cognitive triad: people’s beliefs about themselves, their world and their futures.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): a type of psychotherapy in which negative thoughts and beliefs are changed, sometimes involves assigning behavioral homework.

Rational emotive behavior therapy: type of therapy that looks to expose and challenge the dysfunctional or irrational fears of clients

Psychoactive medications: commonly prescribed to patients to treat a range of psychological problems.

Antipsychotic medications: drugs administered to people with schizophrenia, that block the receptors to dopamine neurotransmitters.

Tardive dyskinesia: chronic muscle tremors that mimic Parkinson’s, a common side effect to antipsychotic medication.

Antidepressants: medicine that increases the activity neurotransmitters in the brain, often used to treat depression.

Lithium: a metal often used in treatment of manic phase in bipolar disorder.

Antianxiety drugs: drugs that depress the activity of the central nervous system, making people feel more relaxed

Biofeedback: a common therapy used in treating anxiety or depression, client is taught to recognize specific

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): employing magnets into the brain to alter brain activity.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): administers an electric shock through the brain’s hemispheres and can potentially alter the brain’s blood flow.

Psychosurgery: performing surgery on parts of the brain in an attempt to alter behavior.

Prefrontal lobotomy: an outdated method of psychosurgery involving cutting out the frontal lobe of the brain, attempting to calm behavior of patients by reducing level of functioning.

Respecting people’s rights and dignity:

Fidelity: faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support.

Cultural humility: an ongoing process of self-exploration and self-critique combined with a willingness to learn from others.

Nonmaleficence: the medical obligation to do no harm.

Therapeutic alliance: The success of the treatment process is affected by the relationship between the client and therapist.

Evidence-based interventions: an ongoing process of self-exploration and self-critique combined with a willingness to learn from others.

Types of Therapy

Psychodynamic Therapy

• Views mental issues as unconscious conflicts

• Assert that patients can suffer from symptom substitution: phenomena where when a person is treated successfully for a psychological disorder, they start to experience another one.

  • argue that symptoms are outward manifestations of inner problems

• Freud came up with many techniques to delve into the unconscious mind

  • Hypnosis: a state in which psychoanalysts believe people are less likely to repress troubling thoughts

  • Free Association: Saying whatever comes to mind without thinking- more likely to reveal clues by eluding ego

  • Dream Interpretation: interpreting dreams to find the root of the problem, as they believe the ego’s defenses are relaxed in this time

• all techniques are criticized due to their inherent subjectivity

• Sometimes, patients may disagree with observations. Psychodynamic theorists see this as resistance.

  • People may resist because the process of coming to terms with troubling thoughts and repressed feelings can be painful.

  • Transference happens when patients begin to have very strong feelings towards their therapists. Can vary from love, familial love, hatred, etc.

    • It is believed patients often redirect strong emotions onto their therapist.

Humanistic Therapies

• focuses on helping people understand and accept themselves, to reach self-actualization.

  Self Actualization is to reach your highest potential

• Humanistic approaches focus on the fact that humans are inherently good, and can forge their own destinies

• believe that with the right guidance and support, a person can go on the path to self-fulfillment

  • Carl rogers believed unconditional positive regard was necessary for healthy development.

  • Humanistic therapies are nondirective —— therapists don’t tell clients what to do, they guide clients to figure it out themselves

  • encourage talk about feelings and often reflect it to help clarify the patients feelings for them — active listening

• Gestalt therapy is humanistic

  • importance of the whole

  • encourage clients to explore feelings they may not be aware of, encourage body position and minute actions

  • stress importance of being present, to properly appreciate the totality of an occurring experience

• Existential Therapies

  • focus on helping clients achieve a good perception of their lives

  • support clients and help them visualize or formulate their lives to make it seem more worthwhile.

Behavioral Therapies

• Base therapies on learning principles

• counterconditioning example: graham is afraid of going to the doctor and cries. His mother, to replace the crying response with contentment might bring his favorite toys or snacks with them to the appointment.

• Systematic Desensitization: is a combo of relaxation techniques and exposure to overcome anxiety or phobias

  • Vivo: Client faces actual feared objects

  • Covert: Client imagines fear inducing stimuli

• the more times relaxation is paired with the feared stimuli, the stronger the relaxation response will become.

• Flooding: the opposite of desensitization, asking the client to face the most feared item first.

• Modelling is another way to cure phobias, melding cognitive and behavioral.

Cognitive Therapies

• methods of therapy focus on changing unhealthy thoughts and belief systems

• Is commonly applied in treatment of depression

  • getting clients to engage in behaviors that’ll lead them to success

  • people suffering from depression have negative beliefs in the area of cognitive triad

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Therapists use REBT to not only challenge beliefs systems of clients, but also change what they do.

  • they may give homework assignments to demonstrate that the outcome they expect doesn’t actually happen

Group Therapy

• Family therapy

  • helps by revealing patterns in the environment of the household and interaction with members to help the client

• Self Help groups like AA are less expensive and don’t involve a therapist but are still effective for clients

Somatic Therapies

• Therapies that produce bodily changes

• Psychologists with a biomedical orientation see disorders in organic causes

• Most common type is drug therapy

  • used to treat schizophrenia and other disorders which involve disordered thinking, so that therapy is more effective

Psychoactive medications: used to treat schizophrenia

• Thorazine

• Haldol

  • Blocks sites of the dopamine neurotransmitter

  • Side effect of tardive dyskenesia

Mood disorders respond well to drug/chemotherapy

• antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, serotonin

  • increase serotonin activity

• Lithium is often used to treat the manic phase of bipolar disorder

Antianxiety Drugs

• used to treat anxiety

• Barbiturates and and benzodiazepines

• Biofeedback

Electroconvulsive therapy:

• Bilateral ECT: Current passed through both hemispheres

• Unilateral ECT: Current passed through one hemisphere

Bilateral ECT is more effective, but can have side effects such as memory loss.

• Often used in severe cases of depression

Psychosurgery: purposeful destruction of parts of the brain in order to alter behavior

• Frontal Lobotomies were performed when mental illnesses were stigmatized since it was shown to reduce their symptoms.

Eclectic Therapies

• Therapies can be combined in effective ways

  • Ex. CBT, is effective in treating mood disorders by combining both systematic desensitization and talk therapy

  • Somatic Cognitive Therapy: combination of drug therapy with cognitive talk therapy for mood disorders.

Kinds of Therapists

Psychiatrists: medical doctors who are authorized to prescribe medications, often favor a biomedical model of illness.

Clinical Psychologist: Doctoral degrees, part of training is involved with internships from a professional. Usually deal with people suffering from more severe issues.

Counselling Therapists: graduate degree in psychology, includes an internship overseen by experienced professionals. Generally deal with people whose problems are less severe than those brought to a CP.