Psychological Disorders

Defining Mental Disorders

  • Mental disorder: A persistent disturbance or dysfunction in behavior, thoughts, or emotions that causes significant distress or impairment.
  • Medical model: Abnormal psychological experiences have biological and environmental causes and possible cures, defined by symptoms.
  • Disorder: A common set of signs/symptoms.
  • Disease: A known pathological process affecting the body.
  • Diagnosis: Determination as to whether a disorder/disease is present.

Classifying Disorders – The DSM

  • Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): A classification system that describes the symptoms used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from others.

Causation of Disorders – Two Approaches

  • Biopsychosocial perspective: Explains mental disorders as a result of interactions among biological, psychological, and social factors.
  • Diathesis-stress model: A person may be predisposed to a psychological disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress.

A New Approach - RDoC

  • Research Domain Criteria Project: A new initiative that aims to guide the classification and understanding of mental disorders by revealing the basic processes that give rise to them.
  • Example: Instead of focusing strictly on cocaine addiction, focus on what causes abnormalities in responsiveness to reward.

Anxiety Disorders

  • Anxiety disorder: Class of mental disorders in which anxiety is the predominant feature.
  • Phobic disorders: Persistent and excessive fear/avoidance of specific objects, activities, or situations.
    • Specific phobia
    • Social phobia
    • Preparedness theory
  • Panic disorder: Sudden occurrence of multiple psychological and physiological symptoms that contribute to a feeling of stark terror.
    • Agoraphobia
  • Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Chronic excessive worry accompanied by at least three of the following:
    • Restlessness
    • Fatigue
    • Concentration problems
    • Irritability
    • Muscle tension
    • Sleep disturbance

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder & PTSD

  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Repetitive, intrusive thoughts and ritualistic behaviors designed to fend off those thoughts that interfere significantly with an individual’s functioning.
    • Intrusive thoughts = obsessions
    • Ritualistic behaviors = compulsions
  • Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Chronic physiological arousal, recurrent unwanted thoughts or images of the trauma, and avoidance of things that call the traumatic event to mind.

Depressive Disorders

  • Mood disorders: Disorders that have a mood disturbance as their predominant feature.
  • Major depressive disorder: A severely depressed mood and/or inability to experience pleasure that lasts 2 or more weeks.
    • Worthlessness
    • Lethargy
    • Sleep & appetite disturbance
  • Persistent depressive disorder: Less severe depression persisting for at least 2 years.
  • Seasonal affective disorder (SAD): Depressive episodes in a seasonal pattern.
  • Negative thoughts contribute to depression.

Bipolar Disorder

  • Bipolar disorder: A condition characterized by cycles of abnormal, persistent high mood and low mood.
    • High mood = mania
    • Low mood = depression
  • Notable individuals thought to have bipolar disorder:
    • Isaac Newton
    • Van Gogh
    • Abraham Lincoln
    • Winston Churchill
    • Theodore Roosevelt

Schizophrenia – Psychotic Disorders

  • Schizophrenia: Profound disruption of basic psychological processes; a distorted perception of reality; altered or blunted emotion; and disturbances in thought, motivation, and behavior.
  • Positive symptoms: Thoughts and behaviors not seen in those without the disorder.
    • Hallucinations: False perceptual experiences that have a compelling sense.
    • Delusions: False beliefs that are maintained despite their irrationality.
    • Disorganized speech: Severe disruption of verbal communications in which ideas shift rapidly among unrelated topics.
    • Grossly disorganized behavior: Behavior that is inappropriate for the situation.
    • Catatonic behavior: Marked decrease in all movement or an increase in muscular rigidity and overactivity.
  • Negative symptoms: Deficits in or disruptions of normal emotions and behaviors.
    • Emotional and social withdrawal: Flattened affect.
    • Poverty of speech: Speech contains/conveys little information because the phrases are vague/empty.
  • Cognitive deficits: Impairments in executive functioning, attention, and working memory.

Schizophrenia - Biological Factors

  • Dopamine hypothesis - the idea that schizophrenia involves an excess of dopamine activity

Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence

  • Autism spectrum disorder: Condition beginning in early childhood in which a person shows persistent communication deficits and restricted/repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities.
  • Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Persistent pattern of severe problems with inattention and/or hyperactivity or impulsiveness that impairs functioning.
  • Conduct disorder: Pattern of deviant behavior involving aggression to people or animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft, or serious rule violations.

Personality Disorders - Antisocial Disorder

  • Numerous personality disorders exist including:
    • Paranoid
    • Borderline
    • Narcissistic
    • Dependent
  • Anyone familiar with the term sociopath or psychopath?
  • Antisocial personality disorder: A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood/early adolescence and continues into adulthood.

Self-Harm Behaviors

  • Suicide: Intentional self-inflicted death.
  • Suicide attempts: Potentially harmful behavior with some intention of dying.
  • Nonsuicidal self-injury: Direct deliberate destruction of body tissue in the absence of any intent to die.