Abnormal Behavior

psychological disorders: a pattern of behavioral and psychological symptoms that causes significant personal distress, impairs the ability to function in one or more important areas of daily life or both

two different models that are ways that people view psychological disorders

medical model: the concept that diseases have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and in most cases cured

• viewing a psychological disorder as something like diabetes

• can be treated by changes in lifestyles, behavior, taking medication

• can explain some disorders in certain people

bio-psycho-social perspective: a more contemporary perspective which assumes that biological, sociocultural, and psychological factors combine and interact to produce psychological disorders

• there can be consistent markers in the brain with people with schizophrenia, over-production of dopamine, this particular view takes into account that you may have the genetic markers but if you aren’t in a stressful environment you may never express it

In order for the different doctors to have some commonality they use:

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): the book published by the American Psychiatric Association that describes the specific symptoms and diagnostic guidelines for different psychological disorders

• in it’s fifth edition

• when it was being revised there was a lot of debate about it

• some people don’t totally agree with it

• breaks down into big categories and then they break down into smaller categories

• you only need to express x out of however many symptoms to be considered having that disorder

Anxiety Disorders

can be a healthy response

anxiety: an unpleasant emotional state characterized by physical arousal and feelings of tension apprehension and worry

anxiety disorders: a category of psychological disorders in which extreme anxiety is the main diagnostic feature that causes significant disruptions in the person's cognitive, behavioral, or interpersonal functioning

• tend to run in families

• impairing your ability to think in a normal way

• may not be able to have healthy relationships with family, friends, co-workers

• 3 features distinguish normal anxiety from pathological anxiety:

  • pathological anxiety is irrational—the anxiety is provoked by perceived threats that are non-existent or exaggerated and the anxiety response is out of proportion with the actual importance of the situation

  • pathological anxiety is uncontrollable—they can’t shut off the alarm reaction even when the person knows that that anxiety for that situation is out of proportion or unrealistic

  • pathological anxiety is disruptive—interferes with relationships, jobs, academic performance, or everyday activities

  • that anxiety is intense, frequent, persistent, and disruptive

Generalized anxiety disorder: characterized by excessive, global, and persistent symptoms of anxiety also called free-floating anxiety

• it can be attached to virtually any object or none at all

• when the source of a worry passes another one very quickly replaces it

• in such a heightened state of worry, anxiety

Panic disorder: when a person experiences frequent and unexpected panic attacks, the frequency of panic attacks are highly variable and quite unpredictable sometimes the panic attack occurs after a stressful experience and sometimes the first panic attack seems to come from nowhere

• panic attacks: a sudden episode of extreme anxiety that rapidly escalates in intensity

  • common symptoms are: pounding heart, rapid breathing, breathlessness, and a choking sensation the person may also sweat, tremble, and experience light-headedness, chills, or hot flashes

  • physical arousal causes the person to experience feelings of terror and the belief that one is about to die, go crazy, or completely lose control

  • the panic attack typically peaks within 10 minutes of onset and then gradually subsides

  • although panic attacks are more likely to happen with panic disorder

phobia: an irrational fear triggered by a specific object or situation most people experience a specific phobia, there is a specific situation or a specific object that interferes with your ability to function in daily life

• agoraphobia: the extreme and irrational fear of experiencing a panic attack in a public situation and being unable to escape or get help

  • also referred to as fear of the marketplace

  • more people nowadays are more fearful, because crazy people also go out

  • they're going to be a situation and that you won’t be able to get out of the situation

  • withdrawing from the outside world

• social phobia: the extreme and irrational fear of being embarrassed, judged, or scrutinized by others in social situations

  • they know it’s irrational

  • but it is very real to them

• specific phobias tend to fall into 4 categories:

  • fear of particular situations: flying, driving, elevators, crowds, bridges, and enclosed spaces

  • fear of features of the natural environment: heights, water, thunderstorms, or lighting

  • fear of injury or blood: injections, needles, medical or dental procedures

  • fear of animals and insects: snakes, spiders, dogs, cats, slugs, or bats

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): an anxiety disorder in which the symptoms of anxiety are triggered by intrusive repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and urges to perform certain actions (compulsions)

• fear of dirt, germs, and other forms of contamination

• pathological doubt about having completed a simple task such as locking doors or shutting off appliances

• compulsive behaviors are typically ritual behaviors that must be carried out in a specific pattern or sequence

• can also be physical behaviors such as repeatedly washing your hands, checking doors or windows, or entering and reentering doorways so it is in the middle, and having to touch something with both hands they can be covert mental behaviors such as counting or reciting certain phrases to yourself

• when you have ideas that cause you to be anxious you have to repeatedly do something so that the anxiety is reduced

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): it has chronic and persistent symptoms of anxiety that develop in response to an extreme physical or psychological trauma

• extreme trauma: trauma that are events that produce intense feelings of horror and helplessness such as a serious physical injury or threat of injury to yourself or a loved one

• events known to cause PTSD: military combat, survivors of disaster, physical/sexual assaults, and random shooting sprees

  • none of those are decreasing but they are increasing

• 3 core symptoms:

  • the person frequently recalls the event, the recollections are intrusive

    • intrusive: unwanted and interferes with normal thoughts

  • the person avoids stimuli or situations that tend to trigger memories and undergoes a general numbing of emotional responses

  • the person experiences the increased physical arousal associated with anxiety — they may be easily startled, experience sleep disturbances, have problems concentrating, have problems remembering, and be prone to irritability or angry outbursts

somatic symptom disorder: a form of mental illness that causes one or more bodily symptoms including pain, the symptoms may or may not be traceable to a physical cause other mental illnesses, or substance abuse, but regardless they cause excessive and disproportion levels of distress

• symptoms may involve one or more different body systems such as pain, neurological problems, gastrointestinal complaints, or sexual symptoms

• used to be called somatoform

• the symptoms can interfere with their daily lives

• may spend a lot of time and money at doctors getting tests done, that come back normal, but they are still experiencing the pain

• illness anxiety disorder: people who have this illness are preoccupied with a concern that they have a serious disease, they often believe that minor complaints are signs of various serious medical illnesses

  • have headaches and then believe they have a brain tumor

  • used to be called hypochondriasis

• conversion disorder: people who have this have neurological symptoms that can not be traced back to a medical cause

  • common symptoms: weakness, paralysis, abnormal movements such as tremors unsteady gate, or seizures, blindness, hearing loss, loss of sensation, or numbness

  • also called functional neurological symptom disorder

• factitious disorder: people producing or faking physical or mental illness when they are not really sick or intentionally making a minor illness worse they may also create an illness or injury in another person

  • Munchausen by proxy

• Pseudocyesis: false belief that a woman is pregnant

  • symptoms they claim to experience: expanded abdomen, feeling labor pains, nausea, fetal movement, breast changes, and they stop having a period

Mood disorders

mood disorders: a category of mental disorders in which significant and chronic disruption in mood is the predominant symptom causing impaired cognitive, behavioral, and physical functioning

• Major depression: characterized by extreme and persistent feelings of despondency, worthlessness, and hopelessness causing impaired emotional cognitive, behavioral, and physical functioning

  • symptoms:

    • emotional symptoms: feelings of sadness, hopelessness, emptiness, or worthlessness, feeling emotionally disconnected from others

    • cognitive symptoms: difficulty thinking, concentrating, and remembering, global negativity and pessimism, suicidal thoughts, or pre-occupation with death

    • behavioral symptoms: dejected facial expression, less eye contact, smiling less often, slowed movements, speech, or gestures, loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities, withdrawal from social activities, changes in appetite (some lose or gain a lot of weight), insomnia, or over-sleeping, chronic aches and pains, global feelings of anxiety, restlessness, fidgety activity

  • in order for a person to be diagnosed with major depression they need to have experienced these symptoms for two weeks or more

  • in some cases the negative spiral is triggered by a negative event or a stressful situation in many cases there doesn’t seem to be an external cause

• Dysthymic: chronic ongoing low-grade feelings of depression that produce subjective discomfort but do not seriously impair the ability to function

  • a less intense and shorter period than major depression

  • cause is usually in response to a stressful event or trauma

• Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): when a person experiences episodes of depression that typically recur in the fall and winter and remit during the spring and summer

  • small number of people with opposite seasons happy in winter and sad in summer

  • symptoms still the same as major depression and dysthymic

• Postpartum depression: the depression that follows the birth of a baby

  • a little different symptoms

    • symptoms: depressed mood, mood swings, crying too much, difficulty bonding with the baby, withdrawing from family and friends, intense irritability and anger, sleep disturbances, overwhelming tiredness or loss of energy, reduced ability to think clearly, concentrate, or make decisions, severe anxiety and panic attacks, thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, and maybe even recurring thoughts of death and suicide

  • Postpartum depression with psychosis

    • murdering the children

• Bipolar disorder:

  • formally called manic depression

  • same symptoms as major depression

  • the change in the mania: overly excited, marked irritable, mind racing, overly friendly, low-level arrogance, sometimes temper tantrums, high-risk behavior — doing daredevil type, sexual, spending

  • describes manic period: you feel as good as you would feel on the best high on the cleanest cocaine

  • depressed state: the same kind of overwhelming sadness as if all the people you love and care about all died at the same time

  • more depression than mania

  • suicide and car crashes are the main causes

  • 2-3 million americans die from bipolar

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dissociative disorders

dissociative disorder: a category of psychological disorders in which extreme and frequent disruptions of awareness, memory, and personal identity impair the ability to function

• dissociative amnesia: the inability to remember personal information and it’s too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness

  • usually not a loss of general knowledge or skills

  • often a response to stress, trauma, or sn extremely distressing situations such as combat experience, marital problems, or physical abuse

• dissociative fugue: sudden unexpected travel away from home amnesia, confusion about personal identity, or assumption of a new identity

  • usually associated with traumatic events or stressful periods

  • someone that doesn’t know who they are or how they got there

  • the length of the memory loss can vary

• dissociate identity disorder (DID): involves extensive memory disruptions along with the presence of two or more distinct personalities

  • each personality usually has its own name and is experienced as if it has its own personal history and self-image

  • these alternate personalities are sometimes just called alters they can be of different ages, genders, and they may have different health conditions

  • the alters hold memories, emotions, and motives that are not immisable to the individual's conscious mind

  • typically between 10 and 15

  • also called multiple personalities

  • the symptoms of amnesia and memory problems are usually __ in cases of DID

  • It is also common to have frequent gaps in memory for both recent and childhood experiences

  • the person often times “loses time” and is unable to recall their behavior or whereabouts during specific time periods

  • usually, this is the result of extreme stress or trauma

Schizophrenia: a mental disorder in which the ability to function is impaired by severely distorted beliefs perceptions and thought processes

• one in one hundred will develop schizophrenia in their lifetime

• has positive and negative symptoms

• negative symptoms: symptoms that reflect defects or deficits in normal functioning including flat affect alogia and abolition

  • see physical form but you're not getting a response out of them

• positive symptoms: symptoms that reflect excesses or distortions of normal functioning including delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thoughts and behaviors

• symptoms: delusions, hallucinations

  • delusion: a falsely held belief that persists despite contradictory evidence

    • delusions of reference: are when a person believes that other people are constantly talking about them or that everything that happens is somehow related to them

    • delusions of grandeur: when a person believes they are extremely important, powerful, or wealthy

      • people who believe they are God, Elvis, a political figure, a military figure

    • delusions of persecution: the people who believe that others are plotting against them or trying to harm them or someone to whom they are close

      • falls under the paranoia that you hear people experiencing

  • hallucinations: a false or distorted perception that seems vividly real to the person experiencing it

    • visual and auditory hallucinations

    • some people who have smell, taste, and tactile hallucinations

• paranoid schizophrenia: well-organized delusional beliefs reflecting persecutory or grandiose ideas

  • when they tell you what their delusions are so they tell you in a way that you can understand

  • frequent auditory hallucinations usually voices — they are going to be saying things that assert, enhance, and support their paranoia

  • little or no disorganized behavior speech or flat affect

• catatonic schizophrenia: highly disturbed movements or actions such as extreme excitement, bizarre postures or grimaces, or being completely immobile

  • can be flailing around and then go completely immobile

  • echos words spoken by others or imitates movements of others

• disorganized schizophrenia: flat or inappropriate emotional expressions

  • a person that goes to a wedding and cries historically and goes to a funeral and laughs a lot

  • can have no expression

  • severely disorganized speech — one of several things

    • alogia: greatly reduced production of speech

      • sometimes called poverty of speech

      • short brief comments or bland comments (no inflection)

    • word salad: the same thing as an actual salad — you take a lot of different ingredients and mix them up —

      • ex they asked hru and they responded yes sir it is a good day for rainbows you know yes sire like unconcerned flappers of the Cosmo Blue

  • severely disorganized behavior

    • avolition: the inability to initiate or persist in even simple forms of goal-directive behavior

      • they may not take a bath or interact with ppl, they can sit staring into space for hours at a time

• undifferentiated schizophrenia: displays the characteristic symptoms meaning they have hallucinations and delusions but not in a way that fits the pattern for paranoid, catatonic, or disorganized type

  • kind of like the generalized anxiety disorder of schizophrenia — the catch-all

.personality disorders

personality disorder: inflexible maladaptive patterns of thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal functioning that are stable over time and across situations and deviate from the expectations of the individual’s culture

• they will have a wide range of emotions and behaviors

• they are consistently unable to adapt and be flexible

• three clusters A, B, and C

• one is related to anxiety, and one is related to odd and eccentric behavior

• focusing on cluster B: focuses on dramatic or impulsive behaviors

  • histrionic personality disorder: excessive sensitivity to others’ approval, attention-grabbing often sexually provocative clothing and behavior, excessive concern for your physical appearance, false sense of intimacy with others, constant sudden emotional shifts

    • they have to be the center of attention, whether it is negative or positive

  • narcissistic personality disorder: inflated sense of and preoccupation with your importance, achievements, and talents, inability to empathize with others, excessive anger or shame in response to criticism, manipulation of others to further your own desires

    • people who believe they are more important, smarter, attractive, and valued in the world and they think people should believe that too

  • borderline personality disorder: difficulty controlling emotions and impulses, frequent dramatic changes in mood, opinions, and plans, stormy relationships involving frequent intense anger and possibly physical fights, fear of being alone despite a tendency to push others away, feelings of emptiness inside, suicide attempts, or self-mutilation

    • they live emotionally and behaviorally like their thoughts are on a roller coaster and they will take you on that roller coaster with you

  • anti-social personality disorder: chronic irresponsibility and unreliability, lack of regard for the law and for other's rights, persistent lying and stealing, aggressive even violent behavior, lack of remorse for hurting others, and lack of concern for the safety of yourself and others

    • this behavior is evident by age 15, bullies, hurting or killing animals, 6% of males and 1% of females

    • they can be serial killers, serial rapists, clever con artists

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