Abnormal Psychology
Culture-Bound Syndromes
Culture-Bound Syndrome: A wide range of disorders occurring in particular localities or ethnic groups.
May or may not correspond to diagnostic categories in DSM-IV or ICD-10.
Society and culture affect the way that mental illness manifests in a psychologically vulnerable individual.
Usually in the absence of any primary biological factors.
Examples of Culture-Bound Syndromes
Amok
Violent, disorderly, or homicidal rage accompanied by amnesia, after which the individual may commit suicide.
Also called Bouffee Delirante.
Acute and transient psychotic disorder.
Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Resembles the Scandinavian berserker, the Puerto-Rican mal de pelea, the South-American colerina, and the Navajo Native American iich’aa.
Brain Fag Syndrome
Combination of cognitive symptoms (reduced concentration and poor memory) with somatic ones (blurred vision, head/neck pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance).
Attributed to excessive pressure in academic performance.
West African students.
Dhat
Severe anxiety and hypochondria related to loss of semen through urine, nocturnal emission, or masturbation.
Usually associated with somatic and emotional symptoms, such as fatigue, sexual dysfunction, anxiety, and dysphoria.
Indian men.
Ghost Sickness
Preoccupation with death and the diseased.
Protracted or pathological grief or depression.
Native Americans.
Hwa-Byung
Individuals internalize their anger and manifest psychosomatic symptoms, such as epigastric pain, muscular aches and pains, loss of appetite, sleep disturbance, palpitations, breathlessness, dysphoria, anxiety, and panic.
Korea.
Shenjing Shuairuo
Diagnosis of a range of mental health disorders.
Typically mood or anxiety disorder with somatic symptoms.
China.
Uppgivenhetssyndrom
Coma-like symptoms; affected individuals refuse to move, talk, or eat.
Only affects refugee children from former Soviet or Yugoslav states who now live in Sweden.
Children develop the illness whenever they realize that their family is about to be deported to their original country.
Koro
Anxiety that one's own genitalia is shrinking, resulting in possible death.
Asia, mainly China.
Saora
Memory loss, fainting, inappropriate crying or laughing.
Occurs in response to social pressure to lead a certain way of life.
Attributed to supernatural beings who want to marry the afflicted persons (young men and women).
Southeastern India.
Maladi Moun
Illness sent by others out of envy and hatred.
Stands for humanly caused illness.
Haiti.
Clinical Lycanthropy
Delusions of transforming into an animal.
Present in various cultures.
Piblokto
Dissociative episode and prolonged extreme excitement.
Followed by seizures and coma.
Also called arctic hysteria.
Arctic.
Kufungisisa
Disorder of distress/thinking too much.
Cause of conditions akin to anxiety and depression.
Zimbabwe.
Latah
Exaggerated startle response experiencing trance-like dissociation.
Also exhibits echolalia and echopraxia.
Other names include Imu, Mali-Mali, Jumping Frenchmen Of Maine.
Southeast Asia, Japan.
Jikoshu-Kyofu
Olfactory reference syndrome (DSM-5).
Preoccupation with a false belief that one emits a foul or offensive body odor.
Khyal Cap
Wind Attacks.
Panic attacks due to wind-like substance rising up in the body.
Cambodia.
Susto
Fright Disorder.
Soul leaving the body in response to frightening experience.
Latin America.
Ataque de Nervios
Anxiety-related.
Panic attack with manifestations of shouting uncontrollably and bursting into tears.
Hispanic American.
Kyol Goeu
Wind overload.
Panic attack.
Too much wind or gas in the body, which may cause blood vessels to burst.
Cambodia, Devon Hinton.
Pa-Leng
Frigophobia.
Irrational fear of becoming too cold.
China.
Zou Huo Ru Mo
Qigong psychotic reaction.
Undesirable somatic or psychological symptoms (dissociation and paranoia) experienced during or after Qigong.
Sin-Byeong
Anxiety and somatic complaints.
Possession by ancestral spirits.
Linked to the Korean shamanic tradition.
Also called spirit sickness.
Korea.
Taijin Kyofusho
Disorder of Fear/Fear of offending others.
Anxiety of extreme self-consciousness regarding appearance to avoid offending others.
Japan.
Ufufunyane
Attributed to the effects of magical potions (given by rejected lovers), demons, or spiritual possession.
Symptoms include sobbing, paralysis, temporary blindness, trance-like states, loss of consciousness, and nightmares with sexual themes.
Africa.
Amafufunyana
Involves a person’s stomach speaking a language that the person doesn’t understand.
The stomach also delivers threats and dishes out orders to the victim.
Other symptoms include fatigue, nightmares, sleep difficulties, and agitation.
Zulus and the Xhosas of South Africa.
Hikikomori
Extreme social isolation.
When the youth withdraws from everyone and locks themselves up in their home for months.
Japan.
Wendigo Psychosis
Insatiable craving for human flesh, even when other food is available.
Individuals develop an obsession with becoming a wendigo.
This obsession may range from a fear to a delusional belief and can be associated with suicidal and homicidal thoughts.
Native Americans.
Zar
Spirit possession.
Some develop long-term relationship with the possessor.
Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Introduction to Abnormal Psychology
Outline
Understanding Psychopathology
Defining Abnormal Behavior
Characteristics of a Mental Disorder
Science of Psychopathology
Describing Abnormal Behavior
The Supernatural Tradition
Early Demonology
Stress and Melancholy
The Dark Ages
The Biological Tradition
Hippocrates and Galen
The 19th Century
The Development of Biological Treatments
The Psychological Tradition
Moral Therapy
Asylum Reform and the Decline of Moral Therapy
Psychoanalytic Theory
Humanistic Theory
The Behavioral Model
The Scientific Method and an Integrative Approach
Understanding Psychopathology
Psychopathology: The study of the nature, development, and treatment of mental disorders.
A Psychological Disorder is a psychological dysfunction within an individual that causes personal distress or disability that is not typical or culturally expected
According to the DSM, psychological disorders are behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunctions that are unexpected in their cultural context and associated with present distress and impairment in functioning or increased risk of suffering, death, pain, or impairment.
It is usually determined based on the presence of several characteristics at one time.
No single characteristic can fully define the concept.
Characteristics of Mental Disorder (4 D’s)
Psychological Dysfunction
Breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning.
Internal mechanism is unable to perform its usual function (e.g., being happy during a car accident).
Personal Distress
Must cause clinically significant distress (requires clinical judgment) (e.g., Antisocial Personality Disorder, Anorexia Nervosa).
Disability
Impairment in some important area of life.
Interference in the normal functioning of the person.
Violation of Social Norms (Deviance)
Reaction is outside cultural norms because it occurs infrequently.
Deviates from the average.
Science of Psychopathology
Developmental Psychopathology: The study of changes in abnormal behavior.
Etiology: The study of origins.
Includes biological, psychological, and social dimensions.
Professionals
PhD: Clinical & Counseling Psychologists
Heavy emphasis on research, statistics, neuroscience, and empirically based study of human behavior.
Considered a research degree.
PsyD: Clinical & Counseling Doctors of Psychology
Similar to a PhD but has less emphasis on research.
Mainly focused on clinical training.
RPsy: Registered Psychologists
Provide counseling/therapy and work in any area of psychology within their scope of practice.
RPm: Registered Psychometricians
Mainly responsible for administering and scoring psychological tests.
Psychological reports are often prepared based on the results.
Other tasks include conducting intake interviews.
MD: Psychiatrists
Function as physicians via the prescription of psychoactive medications.
MSW: Psychiatric & Non-psychiatric Social Workers
Focus of training is on psychotherapy.
Typically requires 2 years of graduate study.
Do not receive training in psychological assessment.
MN/MSN: Psychiatric Nurses
Receive training at the bachelor’s or master’s level.
Has prescription privileges.
Scientist-Practitioner Model: Mental health professionals that take a scientific approach to their work.
Consumer of Science: Use the most recent scientific findings and apply them to their work.
Evaluator of Science: Evaluate their own assessment and procedures to see whether they work.
Creator of Science: Conduct research that results in new useful techniques and procedures.
Etiology – study of origins
Has biological, psychological, and social dimensions.
Eclectic Approach: Treatments that do not adhere strictly to one theoretical approach.
Scientific Method of Treatment: Empirical-based approach in treating a disorder.
Integrative Approach: No single influence ever occurs in isolation.
Describing Abnormal Behavior
Presenting Problem
Indicates the problem or reason why the individual is seeking help.
Initial complaint of the client.
Clinical Description
Combination of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that make up a specific disorder.
Prevalence
Total number of cases in a population.
Point Prevalence: Existing at a given point in time.
Period Prevalence: Existing at a given period of time interval (all cases, new and old).
Incidence
Number of new cases that develop in a population during a specific time period (new cases).
Course
Progression and development of the disorder.
Chronic Course: Lasts a long time/a lifetime.
Episodic Course: Appears in distinct episodes/flare-ups.
Time-limited Course: Has a definitive duration and typically resolves after a certain period.
Onset
Initial appearance of the disorder/how it develops.
Acute Onset: Begins suddenly.
Insidious Onset: Develops gradually over an extended period.
Prognosis
Anticipated course of a disorder.
Prognosis is guarded: Low possibility of surviving.
Prognosis is good: High possibility of surviving.
The Supernatural Tradition
Early Demonology
Uncontrollable situations were regarded as supernatural.
Chinese, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks believed that evil beings have the ability to control people.
This belief led to the use of exorcisms and torture to expel evil spirits and treat odd behavior.
Stress and Melancholy
Insanity was considered a curable and natural phenomenon caused by mental/emotional stress.
Despair and lethargy were identified with the sin of arcadia/sloth.
Nicholas Oresme, a chief advisor in the 14th century, suggested that depression (disease of melancholy) was the source of some abnormal behaviors.
The Dark Ages and Demonology
Society regressed back to the belief that mental disorders were caused by the supernatural.
Christian monasteries replaced physicians as healers and authorities of mental health.
Many believed that witchcraft and magic was an act of heresy, which led to the infamous Witch Trials in the 14th through 15th century.
Those accused of witchcraft were tortured/persecuted as ordered by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 due to social unrest.
In the 13th century, hospitals were built under secular jurisdiction to keep the “mad safe until they are restored of reason”.
Lunacy Trials were also conducted to protect individuals with mental illness.
Lunacy – coined by Paracelsus, a Swiss physician who believed that odd behavior was attributed to the misalignment of the moon and stars.
The Biological Tradition
Hippocrates and Galen
Hippocrates: Father of modern medicine; rejected the Greek belief that gods sent mental disturbances as punishment.
He argued that the brain is an organ of consciousness, intellectual life, and emotion capable of brain pathology/trauma.
Introduced the study of Humorology, a system of medicine that determined human temperament.
Coined the word hysteria (wandering uterus), now known as the somatic symptom disorders.
Galen: Built upon the study of Humorology and proposed the Humoral Theory of Disorders to explain disordered thinking.
Imbalance in the 4 Humors led to certain illnesses dependent upon which humors were in excess or deficit.
Treatment involved regulating the environment to increase or decrease heat, dryness, moisture, or cold.
The 4 Humors:
Humor | Type | Source | Personality |
|---|---|---|---|
Yellow Bile | Choleric | Gallbladder | Passionate, ambitious, energetic, assertive, determined, and aggressive |
Black Bile | Melancholic | Spleen | Introversion, introspection, and prone to moodiness or sadness |
Blood | Sanguine | Heart | Cheerful, optimistic, sociable, enthusiastic, warm & outgoing, and seeks excitement & pleasure |
Phlegm | Phlegmatic | Brain | Calm, sluggishness, easygoing, laid back, reserved, peaceful, and unemotional |
The 19th Century
Syphilis: Sexually transmitted disease caused by a bacterial microorganism entering the brain.
Includes delusions of persecution and grandeur.
Now known as advanced syphilis.
General Paresis: A subgroup of psychotic patients deteriorated steadily, becoming paralyzed and dying within 5 years of onset.
Louis Pasteur: Germ theory of disease.
John P. Grey
Most influential American psychiatrist of the time.
Precursor of the current American Journal of Psychiatry.
Argued that causes of insanity were always physical and that the mentally ill should be treated as physically ill.
Invented the rotary fan to ventilate his large hospital.
The Development of Biological Treatments
Emergence of electric shock and brain surgery as treatment for disordered thinking.
Manfred Sakel
Developed the Insulin Shock Therapy.
Used increasingly higher dosages until patients convulsed and became temporarily comatose.
Was abandoned as it resulted in prolonged coma and even death to some.
Benjamin Franklin
Developed the Electric Shock Therapy.
Discovered that mild and modest electric shock to the head produced brief convulsions and memory loss.
His friend realized that the shock made him “strangely elated” and wondered if it might be a useful treatment for depression.
Joseph von Meduna
Observed that schizophrenia was rarely found in individuals with epilepsy.
His followers concluded that induced brain seizures may cure schizophrenia.
Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini
Treated a depressed patient by sending six small shocks directly through the brain.
Later known as Electroconvulsive Therapy.
Drugs for Severe Psychotic Disorders
Opium: Used as sedatives.
Rauwolfia serpentina
Later renamed reserpine.
Used as a depressant action on the nervous system and is generally administered in high blood pressure.
Neuroleptics: Major tranquilizers.
Diminished hallucinatory and delusional thought processes.
Controlled agitation and aggressiveness.
Benzodiazepines: Minor tranquilizers.
Reduced anxiety.
Valium and Librium: Most prescribed drug by 1970s.
Bromides: A class of sedating drugs.
Used at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century to treat anxiety and other psychological disorders.
Neuroleptics: Side effects included chronic tremors and shaking.
Consequences of the Biological Tradition
John Grey reduced/eliminated interest in treating mental patients.
They believed that mental disorders were the result of some as-yet undiscovered brain pathology and were therefore incurable.
Emil Kraepelin was the dominant figure during this period and one of the founding fathers of modern psychiatry.
Scientific approach to psychological disorders and their classification had begun with the search for biological causes.
Treatment was based on humane principles.
The Psychological Tradition
Psychosocial Treatment
Focused on psychological, social, and cultural factors to the causation of psychopathology.
Plato: Thought that the two causes of maladaptive behavior were the social and cultural influences in one’s life and the learning that took place in that environment.
Aristotle: Emphasized the influence of social environment and early learning on later psychopathology.
Philosophers wrote about the importance of fantasies, dreams, and cognitions.
They also advocated humane and responsible care for individuals with psychological disturbances.
Moral Therapy
Included treating institutionalized patients as normally as possible in a setting that encouraged and reinforced normal social interaction.
Providing them with many opportunities for appropriate social and interpersonal contact.
Individual attention clearly emphasized positive consequences for appropriate interactions and behavior, and restraint and seclusion were eliminated.
Originated with Philippe Pinel and Jean-Baptiste Pussin.
Pussin instituted remarkable reforms by removing all chains used to restrain patients and instituting humane and positive psychological interventions.
Pussin persuaded Pinel to go along with the changes.
Declined after the mid-19th century.
Moral therapy worked best when the number of patients in an institution was 200 or fewer (civil war).
Dorothea Dix campaigned endlessly for reform in the treatment of insanity (mental hygiene movement).
Asylum Reform and Decline of Moral Therapy
After WWI, Leprosariums were converted to asylums due to the lack of usage and increase in war survivors.
Benjamin Rush, father of American psychiatry, believed that mental disorder was caused by excess in blood and so introduced the practice of blood-letting.
During the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel was put in charge of the La Bicetre and inspired the humanitarian treatment toward patients (mainly to those in the upper classes).
In 1817, the Friends’ Asylum was established in the US to provide humane treatment which led to the emergence of moral treatment.
In the 19th century, Dorothea Dix, an American advocate and teacher, played a major role in establishing more mental hospitals in the US.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Franz Anton Mesmer – Father of hypnosis
Suggested that psychopathology was caused by an undetectable fluid found in all living organisms called animal magnetism, which could be blocked.
Franklin concluded that animal magnetism was nothing more than strong suggestion.
Jean-Martin Charcot
Demonstrated that some techniques of mesmerism were effective with a number of psychological disorders.
Legitimized the fledgling practice of hypnosis.
Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer
Discovered the unconscious mind and its apparent influence on the production of psychological disorders.
Catharsis: release of emotional material.
Insight: relationship between current emotions and earlier events.
Structure of the Mind – referred to as intrapsychic conflicts
Id: Source of strong sexual and aggressive feelings or energies.
Libido: Energy or drive within the id.
The “animal within us”.
Thanatos: Death instinct.
Operates according to the pleasure principle.
Ego: Ensures that people act realistically.
Superego: Conscience; represents the moral principles instilled by parents and culture.
Defense Mechanisms: Unconscious protective processes that keep primitive emotions associated with conflicts in check so that the ego can continue its coordinating function.
Neurosis: Nonpsychotic psychological disorders that resulted from underlying unconscious conflict; disorders of the nervous system.
Later Developments
Ego Psychology by Anna Freud
Believed that the individual slowly accumulates adaptational capacities, skill in reality testing, and defenses.
Abnormal behavior develops when the ego is deficient in regulating such functions.
Self-Psychology by Heinz Kohut
Focused on a theory of the formation of self-concept.
Argued that the crucial attributes of the self allow an individual to progress toward health or, conversely, to develop neurosis.
Object Relations
Study of how children incorporate the images, the memories, and sometimes the values of a person.
Introjection: Process of incorporation.
Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung.
Inferiority Complex by Alfred Adler.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Free Association: Patients are instructed to say whatever comes to mind without the usual socially required censoring.
Intended to reveal emotionally charged material that may be repressed.
The couch became the symbol of psychotherapy.
Dream Analysis: Therapist interprets the content of dreams, supposedly reflecting the primary-process thinking of the id.
Transference: The redirection to a substitute, usually a therapist, of emotions that were originally felt in childhood.
Humanistic Theory
Emphasized the positive, optimistic side of human nature.
Humanistic Psychology
Humanistic therapists believed that relationships were the single most positive influence in facilitating human growth.
Had little interest in doing research that would discover or create new knowledge.
Self-Actualization
Underlying assumption that all of us could reach our highest potential in all areas of functioning.
Abraham Maslow
Postulated a hierarchy of needs.
Hypothesized that we cannot progress up the hierarchy until we have satisfied the needs at lower levels.
Carl Rogers
Most influential humanist.
Originated client-centered therapy, later known as person-centered therapy.
Client-Centered Therapy: Therapist takes a passive role, making as few interpretations as possible.
Unconditional Positive Regard: Complete and almost unqualified acceptance of most of the client’s feelings and actions.
Empathy: Sympathetic understanding of the individual’s particular view of the world.
The Behavioral Model
Pavlov and Classical Conditioning
Classical Conditioning: Neutral stimulus is paired with a response until it elicits that response.
Stimulus Generalization: Response generalizes to similar stimuli.
Begins with a stimulus that would elicit a response in almost anyone and requires no learning.
No conditions must be present for the response to occur.
Watson and the Rise of Behaviorism
John B. Watson: Considered the founder of behaviorism.
Believed that psychology could be made as scientific as physiology.
Psychology needs introspection or other non-quantifiable methods no more than chemistry and physics do.
Psychology: A purely objective experimental branch of natural science.
Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.
Introspection forms no essential part of its methods.
The Beginnings of Behavior Therapy
Joseph Wolpe: Developed a variety of behavioral procedures for treating his patients, many of whom suffered from phobias.
Systematic Desensitization: Individuals were gradually introduced to the objects or situations they feared.
Paved the way for modern-day fear and anxiety reduction procedures.
B.F. Skinner and Operant Conditioning
Operant Conditioning: Type of learning in which behavior changes as a function of what follows the behavior.
Behavior operates on the environment and changes it in some way.
Strongly influenced by Watson’s conviction that a science of human behavior must be based on observable events and relationships among those events.
Also influenced by Thorndike’s law of effect.
States that behavior is either strengthened or weakened depending on the consequences of that behavior.
The subjects of Skinner’s research were usually animals, mostly pigeons and rats.
Shaping: Process of reinforcing successive approximations to a final behavior or set of behaviors.
The Present The Integrative Approach
Scientific Methods
Were not often applied to the theories and treatments within a tradition.
Methods that would have produced the evidence necessary to confirm or disprove the theories and treatments had not been developed.
Many people accepted various fads and superstitions that ultimately proved to be untrue or useless.
1990s
The increasing sophistication of scientific tools and methodology.
The realization that no one influence ever occurs in isolation.
Behavior is the product of a continual interaction of psychological, biological, and social influences.
Adolf Meyer: Emphasized the equal contributions of biological, psychological, and sociocultural determinism.
2000s
An explosion of knowledge about psychopathology occurred.
Cognitive science and neuroscience began to grow exponentially.
New findings from behavioral science revealed the importance of early experience in determining later development.
2010s
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) instituted a strategic plan to support further research and development.
Its goal was to translate research findings to front-line treatment settings.
An Integrative Approach to Psychopathology
Outline
One-Dimensional vs. Multidimensional Models
Genetic Contributions to Psychopathology
Neuroscience and Its Contributions to Psychopathology
Behavioral and Cognitive Science
Emotions
Cultural, Social, and Interpersonal Factors
Life-Span Development
One-Dimensional vs. Multidimensional Models
One-Dimensional: Looking for a single cause
Multidimensional: Looking for a systemic cause
Multidimensional Integrative Approach: Combination of biological, psychological, emotional, and developmental influences.
One-Dimensional Approach: Attempts to trace the origins of behavior to a single cause.
This perspective on causality is systemic; implies that any particular influence contributing to psychopathology cannot be considered out of context.
No factor contributing to psychopathology can be considered independent.
Abnormal behavior does not originate from one single cause.
Genetic Contributions to Psychopathology
The Nature of Genes
Genes: Long molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
Some characteristics are strongly determined by one or more genes.
Except for identical twins, every person has a unique set of genes.
Each normal human cell has 46 chromosomes arranged in 23 pairs.
One chromosome in each pair comes from the father and one from the mother.
Autosomes: 22 pairs of chromosomes provide programs or directions for the development of the body and brain.
Sex Chromosomes: Last pair of chromosomes that determines an individual’s sex.
Abnormalities in the sex chromosomal pair can cause ambiguous sexual characteristics.
Dominant Gene: Strongly influences a particular trait; only one is needed.
Recessive Gene: Must be paired with another recessive gene to determine a trait.
Gene Dominance: Occurs when one member of a gene pair is consistently expressed over the other.
Polygenic: Influenced by many genes; development, behavior, personality, and intelligence.
Human Genome: An individual’s complete set of genes; consists of more than 20,000 genes.
Quantitative Genetics: Sums up all the tiny effects across many genes.
Molecular Genetics: Focuses on examining the actual structure of genes.
DNA Microarrays: Allow scientists to analyze thousands of genes at once and identify broad networks of genes that may be contributing to a particular trait.
Half of a person’s personality traits and cognitive abilities are caused by genetics but account for less than half in disorders.
Environmental factors may trigger specific genes to turn off or on.
Interactions of Genes and the Environment
Genetic-Environment Paradigm: Shows how behavior and psychopathology are influenced by the interaction of genes and the environment.
An individual’s sensitivity or reaction to an environmental event is influenced by genes.
Many studies show that heredity is an important predisposing causal factor for certain disorders (e.g., depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism).
However, genetic influences are rarely expressed in a simple straightforward manner and do not dictate behavioral outcomes.
Multigenic Determinism: Affects psychological disorders.
Eric Kandel: Proposed the idea that the environment may occasionally turn on certain genes.
This may lead to changes in the number of receptors at the end of a neuron.
Which, in turn, would affect biochemical functioning in the brain.
The brain and its functions are plastic.
Diathesis-Stress Model: People inherit tendencies to express certain traits which may be activated under certain conditions of stress.
Diathesis: A condition that makes someone susceptible to developing a disorder.
Also called vulnerability.
Ex. tendency to faint at the sight of blood.
↑ vulnerability = ↓ stress needed
Gene-Environment Correlation Model: Genetic endowment may increase the probability that an individual will experience stressful life events.
The inherent vulnerability is accompanied by an increased probability that the individual will create the necessary environmental influences needed to trigger their genetic vulnerability.
Also called reciprocal gene–environment model.
↑ vulnerability = ↑ chance to encounter triggers
Epigenetics and the Non-Genomic "Inheritance" of Behavior
Genetic influences are less powerful than what is commonly believed.
Environment cannot change the DNA, it can only change the gene expression.
Genes are turned on or off by an epigenome.
Epigenome: A material that is located outside the genome.
External factors affect the epigenome and can be passed down to generations.
The genome itself is not changed; the epigenome will fade away if the external influences disappear.
The complex interaction of both nature and nurture influences the development of behavior and personality.
Neuroscience and Its Contributions to Psychopathology
Neuroscience Paradigm: Examines the contribution of brain structure and function to psychopathology.
The Nervous System
Central Nervous System: Consists of the brain and the spinal cord; processes all the information received from our senses and organs.
Spinal Cord: Facilitates the sending of messages to and from the brain.
Neurons: Specialized cells that transmit electrical and chemical signals throughout the body.
Nucleus: Found in the cell body and responsible for neural processes.
Dendrite: Has receptors that receive chemical impulses which is then converted to electrical signals (action potential).
Axons: Sends out received signal to other neurons.
Carrier of action potential.
Terminal Buttons: End of an axon
Synapses: Connection between nerve cells.
Synaptic Cleft: Small space between the end of each neuron through which impulse must pass.
Neurotransmitters: Chemicals that allow neurons to send a signal to another neuron.
Peripheral Nervous System: Coordinates with the brain stem to make sure the body is working properly.
Somatic Nervous System: Controls the muscle.
Autonomic Nervous System: Regulates the cardiovascular system and the endocrine system.