ap psych unit 5

Psychological Disorder

• Defined as a pattern of behavior causing stress of dysfunction in multiple areas of life

• DSM-V - defines disorders but does not discuss treatment

Neurosis vs. Psychosis

• Neurosis - functional mental illness involving stress or altered mood but no loss of contact with reality

• Psychosis - loss of contact with reality and inability to function in everyday life

Anxiety

• characterized by heart rate, bp, sweating, rapid breathing, dry mouth, sense of dread

• Some is normal but some is intense and long lasting and impairs functioning and becomes a disorder

• Generalized anxiety disorder - excessive long lasting anxiety with no clear cause or source

• Panic disorder - recurring terrifying panic attacks without warning or obvious cause, can last for years with improvement and recurrence  

Phobias 

• Intense and irrational fear of an object or situation that does not justify that reaction 

Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders

• PTSD - pattern of adverse and disruptive reactions following a traumatic and threatening event long term

Obsessive Compulsive Related Disorders 

• OCD - obsessions plagued by persistent, upsetting, and unwanted thoughts

  • Compulsions - ritualistic and repetitive behaviors

  • Interferes with daily life and people derive no pleasure from it

• Body dysmorphic disorder - the preoccupation with an imagined or exaggerated defect in physical appearance, thinking of imperfection dominates life

Mood Disorders

• Depressive disorders

  • Major depression - disorder where person feels sad, overwhelmed, hopeless for weeks or months, lose interest in activities and relationships

    • Takes two weeks to get diagnosed 

  • Persistent depressive disorder - sad mood, lack of interest, loss of pleasure like major depression but must have for 2 years to get diagnosed

Bipolar and Related Disorders

• Bipolar disorder - alternating between extremes of mood: depression and mania

  • Bipolar I - mania and deep depression

  • Bipolar II - major depression and hypomania

  • Cyclothymic disorder - bipolar equivalent of dysthymia, intensity less evere 

• Causes: genetic links, chemical imbalance, social cognitive explanations(learned helplessness), attribution of blame 

Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders

• Psychological problems in which there are symptoms of a physical disorder without a physical cause, not faking it

• Factitious disorder - someone deceives others by appearing sick, by purposely getting sick, or by self injury, gypsy rose 

• Conversion disorder - person displays blindness, deafness, paralysis, insensitivity to pain without physical cause 

Autism Spectrum Disorder

• Major distinctions 

• Communication disorder - oral motor function

• Pervasive development disorder - delay in skill development

• Major characteristics

  • Sensory issues

  • Slow or no speech development

  • Failure to form social relationships

  • Hyperactive senses

  • Subset of mirror neurons inhibits observational learning

  • Repetitive sensory input is needed to focus and calm down

  • Difficult time planning daily activities, sometimes need visual or written instructions 

  • Often have a few intellectual strengths but lack in other areas

  • Difficulty planning and meeting on time for events

  • Over excited about things leading to repetitive behavior

  • Easily angered and frustrated

Dissociative Disorders

• Rare conditions that involve sudden and usually temporary disruptions in a person’s memory, consciousness, or identity 

• Dissociative amnesia - a dissociative disorder marked by a sudden loss of memory, may forget all personal identifying information 

  • Dissociative fugue - dissociative disorder involving sudden loss of memory and the assumption of a new identity in a new locale

• Depersonalization/Derealization disorder

  • Depersonalization - experiences of unreality, detachment, or being an outside observer with respect to one’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, body, or actions

  • Derealization - experiences of unreality or detachment with respect to surroundings 

• Dissociative identity disorder - dissociative disorder in which a person reports having more than one identity, often appears as a response to childhood trauma 

Personality Disorders

• Inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning usually without depression or delusions 

• Cluster A: Paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal

  • Odd or eccentric behavior

  • Paranoid with deep distrust of others

  • Lack of interpersonal relationships

  • Strange belief systems and attribute unusual meanings to life events ad experience 

• Cluster B: Antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic

  • antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) - all serial killers have this disorder, person exhibits guiltlessness, law breaking, exploitation of others, irresponsibility, and deceit

    • Psychopath - remorseless predators who engage in violence to get what they want

    • Sociopath - less organized, not as good with social norms or behaviors 

    • Failure to conform to social norms or obey the law

    • Manipulating, lying, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure

    • Impulsivity 

    • Irritability and aggressiveness

    • Less frontal lobe activity

•  Borderline - emotionally unstable and unstable sense of self, mood swings, excessive self criticism, extreme judgements of others, preoccupation with feeling abandoned 

• Histrionic - attention seeking, dramatic, lively, flirtatious, inappropriately seductive with others

• Narcissistic - self aggrandizing yet overly dependent on evaluations of others, view themselves as entitled and better than others, deficits in empathy amd in understanding feelings of others

• Cluster C: Avoidant, dependent, obsessive compulsive

  • Avoidant - inhibited and prone to feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and shame, avoid taking social risks and separate themselves

  • Dependent - depends on others for emotional and physical needs

  • Obsessive compulsive - preoccupation of perfection 

Schizophrenia 

• Severe and disabling pattern of extremely disturbed thinking, emotion, perception, behavior that disrupts daily functioning

  • Disorders of thought & language

    • Disorganized thinking

      • Neologisms “new words” that only have meanings to themselves

      • Loose associations - one thought is unconnected to another 

      • Word salad - jumble of words reflecting utterly chaotic thoughts

    • Content 

      • Delusions of influence, self significance, or persecution 

  • Disorders of perception

    • Inability to focus attention

    • Hallucinations 

  • Disorders of emotions

• Positive symptoms - inappropriate behaviors like hallucinations

• Negative symptoms - lack of appropriate behaviors like lacking emotion or movement

• Chronic - develops gradually over time and recovery is unlikely

• Acute - sudden onset, recovery is more likely to occur

• Causes

  • Genetic link

  • Brain abnormalities in frontal lobe, thalamus, amygdala 

  • Dopamine levels 

  • Neurodevelopmental problems

Health Psychology 

• Examine how biological, physiological, and social factors influence health and illness

• Use psychological science to promote health, prevent illness

Stress

• Increases susceptibility to disorders and diseases, linked to psychological issues like hypertension, headaches and immune suppression 

• General adaptation syndrome (GAS) - describes response to stress in 3 main parts

  • Alarm reaction - body’s initial response to stress (fight or flight)

  • Resistance - body attempts to adapt to stressor & releases hormones to maintain readiness

  • Exhaustion - stress subsides and physiological state returns to normal

• Tend and befriend - seek out others to help manage stress and vice versa

• Problem focused coping - views stress as a problem to be solved

• Emotion focused coping - focuses on negative emotional responses to stressors and uses mindfulness exercises

Therapies 

• Psychotherapy - many meta analytics studies have concluded that psychotherapies are generally effective

  • Evidence based interventions to develop treatment plans

  • Therapeutic success is aided by therapist, establish therapeutic alliance with the client 

• Ethical guidelines - nonmaleficence, fidelity, integrity, justice, respect rights & dignity 

Positive psychology 

• Investigates how humans can flourish,maximize their potential, achieve happiness, and improve quality of life

• Seeks to identify factors of positive subjective experiences

• Core virtues - wisdom, courage, humanity, transcendence, justice, moderation (temperance)

• Practicing gratitude (by expressing thankfulness towards others verbally or in writing) is associated with increases in our perceptions of happiness and satisfaction in life (well-being) 

• Many positive psychologists study resilience- why some people adapt/overcome trauma or intense stress 

  • While acknowledging that bad things happen to people, they still focus on how people can flourish

• Post traumatic growth - the ability to construct a meaningful experience in response to period of trauma 

  • New understandings of the world, oneself, and others, increased personal strength

Methods of Therapy 

• Classic Psychoanalysis - Freud developed methods in medical work with “hysteria” (conversion disorder) patients 

• Initially tried hypnosis- not very successful 

• Came to focus on unconscious and conflicts raging within it 

• Gain insight to unconscious thoughts/emotions 

• Interpret and work through ways it motivates maladaptive thoughts/behaviour, may take 3-5 days a week 

• Methods 

  • Free association - lie on couch and report thoughts, memories, or images came to mind

  • Dream interpretation - wishes, impulses, fantasies (latent content) kept out of consciousness while awake by defense mechanisms 

  • Transference - patients express dependence, hostility, even love toward therapist, unconscious process of transferring childhood feelings/conflicts

  • Humanistic therapy - people are capable of consciously controlling own actions, taking responsibility for decisions

    • Behavior is motivated by drive for personal growth/improvement, guided by way they perceive the world 

    • Disorder comes from blocked growth due to distorted perceptions or lack of awareness of feelings 

• Client centered therapy 

  • Attitudes of therapist - unconditional positive regard (acceptance)

  • Convey caring/value for client as a person, no matter what

  • Empathy - attempt to understand how world looks form clients point of view (need not approve of everything) 

  • Active listening 

  • Reflection- paraphrase clients statements and not feelings

  • Genuineness (congruence) - a consistency between way therapist s feel and way they act towards clients, show relationships can be built on openness/honesty 

Behavioral therapies

• Applied behavior analysis - view psychological disorders as learned behaviors to be fixed by learning new behaviors 

• systematic desensitization - joseph wolphe 1958, help patients overcome phobias and other forms of anxiety

  • Client visualizes series of anxiety provoking stimuli while feeling relaxed

    • Progressive relaxation training procedures, fear hierarchy 

    • Gradually weakens learned association between anxiety and feared object

Exposure Therapies

• Systematic and repeated confrontation of a feared stimulus 

• Keeps people in feared but harmless situation and association between feared stimulus and fear response gradually weakens 

Behavior Therapies

• Aversive conditioning - uses classical conditioning to pair an unpleasant stimulus with an undesired behavior

• Token economy - system for improving behavior of institutionalized clients, desirable behaviors are rewarded with tokens

• Biofeedback - uses an external monitoring device to monitor physiological state and learn to control autonomic nervous system responses 

Cognitive Therapy

• Certain disorders can be traced to cognitive distortions

• Cognitive restructuring - identify, challenge, and replace distorted thoughts and beliefs

• Cognitive triad - negative thoughts about oneself, the world, and the future 

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) - combines techniques from cognitive and behavioral approaches to address thoughts and behaviors 

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

• Establishes dialectic between accepting reality of one’s life and behavior and learning to change their lives

• Managing intense emotions 

Bioedial and Drug Therapy

• Neurotransmitters transfer nerve impulses from neuron to neuron

• Irregularities in neurotransmitters implicate a variety of disorders 

• Anti anxiety drugs 

  • Help quell anxiety

  • Induce calmness

  • Reduce muscle tension

  • Minor tranquilizers 

  • Work on GABA 

  • Inhibits flow of nerve impulses

• Antidepressants 

  • Tricyclics - raise levels of norepinephrine and serotonin by interfering with absorption process 

  • SSRIs - produce less serious side effects, less dangerous in overdose

• Antipsychotics - block dopamine at receptor sites