Psychological Disorders
anxiety disorders
Panic Disorder:
Anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread.
Involves terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations.
Often followed by worry over a possible next attack.
of people have recurrent experiences.
Individuals often live in fear of when the next attack might strike.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is most likely characterized by disorganized thinking and disturbed perception
Psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished, inappropriate emotional expression.
Symptoms: Hallucinations, delusions, flat affect
Delusion: A false belief, often of persecution, that may accompany psychotic disorders.
Schizophrenia: Onset and Development
Chronic schizophrenia (process schizophrenia)
Symptoms usually appear by late adolescence or early adulthood.
As people age, psychotic episodes last longer, and recovery periods shorten.
Acute schizophrenia (reactive schizophrenia)
Can begin at any age.
Often a response to an emotionally traumatic event.
Has extended recovery periods.
Phobia
Person experiences a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.
Some are incapacitated by their phobia and the attempts to avoid the feared situation.
Introduction to Psychological Disorders
Psychological Disorder: Syndromes or collection of symptoms marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior.
Disturbed or dysfunctional thoughts, emotions, or behaviors that are maladaptive.
What is Abnormality?
Common feature across definitions: the Four D’s
Deviance
Distress
Dysfunction- interfere with normal day-to-day life
Danger
Influences:
Norms
Culture
Context
Yesterday’s “Therapy”
People with psychological disorders would receive brutal treatment, such as drilling skull holes to release evil spirits and cure those with mental disorders.
The Medical Model
1800s: Search for physical cause of mental disorders and for curative treatments.
Researchers discovered syphilis infects the brain and distorts the mind.
This ignited an eager search for biological causes for mental disorders and treatments.
Mental illness diagnosed on basis of symptoms and treated through therapy.
Credibility gained from recent research in genetically influenced brain abnormalities in brain structure and biochemistry.
The Biopsychosocial Approach
General approach positing that biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors play significant roles in human functioning in the context of disease or illness.
Epigenetics also informs our understanding of disorders.
Diagnostic Classification in Psychiatry and Psychology
Predicts the disorder’s future course.
Lists risks and prognostic factors.
Prompts research into its causes.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5): Most common tool for classifying psychological disorders
American Psychiatric Association, fifth edition
Categorizes and describes diagnostic features, estimates their occurrence and details common concerns/issues.
Does not suggest or outline treatments.
Changes:
Some label changes (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability).
Move from a binary classification system to more spectrum based.
New or altered diagnoses (e.g., disruptive mood dysregulation disorder; prolonged bereavement/ depression); some are controversial.
New categories: hoarding disorder, binge-eating disorder.
DSM-5 Criticism
Antisocial personality disorder and generalized anxiety disorder did poorly on field trials.
DSM-5 contributes to pathologizing of everyday life.
System labels are society’s value judgments.
DSM-5 Benefits
System helps mental health professionals communicate and is useful in research.
Suicide and Self-Injury
Suicide
Affects 1 million people worldwide.
Higher risk with diagnosis of depression but may occur with rebound.
More likely to occur when people feel disconnected from or as if they are a burden to others.
Only 1 in 25 suicide attempts is successful.
Nonsuicidal Self-Injury (NSSI)
Cutting, burning, hitting oneself, pulling out hair, inserting objects under nails or skin, self-administered tattooing
Reasons for engaging in NSSI:
Gain relief from intense negative thoughts through the distraction of pain.
Ask for help and gain attention.
Relieve guilt by self-punishment.
Get others to change their negative behavior (bullying, criticism).
Fit in with a peer group.
Suicide Rates
Research into the suicide rates of different groups shows:
National differences
Racial differences
Gender differences
Age differences and trends
Other group differences
Day-of-the-week differences
Does Disorder Equal Danger?
Mental disorders seldom lead to violence, and clinical prediction of violence is unreliable.
Most people with disorders are nonviolent and are more likely to be victims than attackers.
Rates of Psychological Disorders
Psychological disorder rates vary, depending on the time and place of the survey.
Poverty is a risk factor.
Conditions and experiences associated with poverty contribute to the development of psychological disorders.
Some disorders, such as schizophrenia, can drive people into poverty.
Understanding Anxiety Disorders, OCD, PTSD
Most psychologists interpret anxiety along three categories: conditioning, cognition, and biology.
Conditioning
Classical conditioning research outlines how our fear responses can become linked with formerly neutral objects and events.
Little Albert
Genesis of Phobia
Stimulus generalization research demonstrates how a fearful event can later become a fear of similar events.
Reinforcement (operant conditioning) can maintain a developed fear.
Anything that allows us to avoid the object/situation reinforces that maladaptive behavior.
Fearing a panic attack, we may decide not to leave the house.
Reinforced by feeling calmer, we are likely to repeat that behavior in the future.
Anxiety Disorders
A disorder marked by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety.
Includes:
Social Anxiety Disorder
Agoraphobia
Panic Disorder
Phobias
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Generalized anxiety disorder
Person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal (twitching).
Difficult to concentrate and may tremble and perspire.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Characterized by persistent and repetitive thoughts (obsessions), actions (compulsions), or both.
Obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors interfere with everyday life and cause distress.
Symptoms can lessen over time, but only 1 of 5 completely recovered.
Can include:
Hoarding disorder
Body dysmorphic disorder
Trichotillomania (hair-pulling)/ Excoriation disorder (skin- picking)
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
5%-10% experience this after a traumatic event.
Characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia lingering for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.
Acute stress disorder describes symptoms within those initial four weeks.
Often affects battle-scarred veterans (7.6 percent of combatants; 1.4 percent of noncombatants) and survivors of accidents, disasters, and violent and sexual assaults.
Women are at higher risk.
Somatic Symptom Disorder
A psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause.
Illness Anxiety Disorder
A disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease (formerly called hypochondriasis).
Depressive Disorders
Major Depressive Disorder
Person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms, at least one of which must be either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure.
Persistent Depressive Disorder
Person experiences mildly depressed mood more often than not for at least two years, along with at least two other symptoms.
For some people, depressive symptoms may have a seasonal pattern.
Bipolar Disorder
Disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania; formerly called manic-depressive disorder.
Mania
A hyperactive, wildly optimistic state in which dangerously poor judgment is common.
Bipolar disorder is much less common than major depressive disorder but is often more dysfunctional.
Potent predictor of suicide.
Which of the following examples reflects a symptom of an anxiety disorder rather than normal anxiety?
A. The night before his final exam, Bill is unable to sleep because he is worried about doing well on the test.
B. For the past several weeks, Mavis has been unable to sleep or concentrate at work because she keeps thinking that something terrible might happen to her son at school, even though she knows that he's safe
C. Seth is upset because his girlfriend told him she wants to start dating other people, and he is afraid that she will break up with him.
D. Barbara has just found out that her company has been sold, and she is very worried that she might lose her job.
9. Andrea experiences extreme anxiety when approaching any lake. Her therapist suggests that her fear results from a traumatic boat accident she experienced as a child. The therapist's suggestion reflects a(n) ________ perspective.
A. psychoanalytic
B. biological
C. conditioning
D. epigenetic