Psychological Disorders - Concepts & Theory Flashcards
Psychological Disorders
Patterns of behavior or mental processes that are connected with emotional distress or significant impairment in functioning.
Biopsychosocial Model (or interactionist model)
Explains psychological disorders in terms of a combination of
(a) biological vulnerabilities;
(b) psychological factors such as conditioning, exposure to stress, and self-defeating thoughts about stressors; and
(c) sociocultural factors such as family relationships, unemployment, and cultural beliefs and expectations.
For example, schizophrenia and depression are found around the world, which appears to support other evidence for biological contributors to these disorders. Yet psychological factors such as family stresses and losses can also play roles in their development.
Diathesis–Stress Model
Assumes that there may be biological differences between individuals—diatheses—that explain why some people develop certain psychological disorders under stress, whereas others do not. In the case of schizophrenia, as we will see, the diathesis (or biological difference) would appear to be a genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia.
Diathesis
The view that psychological disorders can be explained in terms of an underlying vulnerability.
Insanity
A legal term descriptive of a person judged to be incapable of recognizing right from wrong or of conforming his or her behavior to the law.
DSM-IV-TR
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.
- IV = 1994, TR=2000
- V will be out in May.
- Divided into classifications (anxiety, mood)
- ICD is used in Europe
Although the DSM is widely used, researchers have some concerns about it. Two of them involve the reliability and validity of the diagnostic standards. The DSM might be considered reliable if different interviewers or raters make the same diagnosis when they evaluate the same people. The DSM might be considered valid if the diagnoses described in the manual correspond to clusters of behaviors observed in the real world. A specific type of validity—predictive validity—means that if a diagnosis is valid, then we should be able to predict what will happen to the person over time (that is, the course of the disorder) and what type of treatment may be of help.
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety disorders have psychological and physical symptoms. The psychological symptoms include worrying, fear of the worst happening, fear of losing control, nervousness, and inability to relax. The physical symptoms reflect arousal—or “overarousal”—of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system: trembling, sweating, a pounding or racing heart, elevated blood pressure (a flushed face), and faintness. Anxiety is an appropriate response to a real threat, but it can be abnormal when it is excessive, when it comes out of nowhere (that is, when events do not seem to warrant it), and when it prevents us from doing important things such as going for medical exams or working with other people. Some anxiety disorders even prevent people from leaving home.
Anxiety Disorders
-Specific Phobias
are excessive, irrational fears of specific objects or situations, such as spiders, snakes, or heights. One specific phobia is fear of elevators. Some people will not enter elevators despite the hardships they incur as a result (such as walking up six flights of steps). Yes, the cable could break. The ventilation could fail. One could be stuck in midair waiting for repairs. These problems are uncommon, however, and it does not make sense for most people to walk up and down several flights of stairs to elude them.
Other specific phobias include claustrophobia (fear of tight or enclosed places), acrophobia (fear of heights), and fear of mice, snakes, and other creepy-crawlies. (Fear of spiders is technically called arachnophobia.) Fears of animals and imaginary creatures are common among children and therefore not considered abnormal.
Anxiety Disorders
-Social Phobias
are persistent fears of scrutiny by others or of doing something that will be humiliating or embarrassing. Excessive fear of public speaking is a common social phobia.
Anxiety Disorders
-Agoraphobia
May affect 3% to 4% of adults (Kessler et al., 2005). Agoraphobia is derived from the Greek words meaning “fear of the marketplace,” or fear of being out in open, busy areas. Some people who receive this diagnosis refuse to venture out of their homes, especially alone. They find it difficult to hold a job or to maintain an ordinary social life.
Anxiety Disorders
-Panic Disorder
An abrupt anxiety attack that is apparently unrelated to specific objects or situations. People with panic disorder experience strong cardiac-related sensations: shortness of breath, heavy sweating, tremors, and pounding of the heart. Many think they are having a heart attack. Levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) in the saliva are elevated during attacks. Many fear suffocation. People with the disorder may also experience choking sensations, nausea, numbness or tingling, flushes or chills, and fear of going crazy or losing control. Panic attacks may last minutes or hours. Afterward, the person usually feels drained.
Anxiety Disorders
-Generalized Anxiety Disorder
The central symptom of generalized anxiety disorder is persistent anxiety. As with panic disorder, the anxiety cannot be attributed to a phobic object, situation, or activity. Rather, it seems to be free floating. The core of the disorder appears to be pervasive worrying about numerous stressors. Symptoms include motor tension (shakiness, inability to relax, furrowed brow, fidgeting); autonomic overarousal (sweating, dry mouth, racing heart, light-headedness, frequent urinating, diarrhea); and excessive vigilance, as shown by irritability, insomnia, and a tendency to be easily distracted.
Anxiety Disorders
-OCD
Is characterized by recurrent, anxiety-provoking thoughts or images that seem irrational and beyond control (obsessions) and seemingly irresistible urges to engage in thoughts or behaviors that tend to reduce the anxiety (compulsions). Obsessions are so compelling and recurrent that they disrupt daily life. They may include doubts about whether one has locked the doors and shut the windows or images such as one mother’s repeated fantasy that her children had been run over on the way home from school.
Anxiety Disorders
-PTSD
People diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) typically show a rapid heart rate and feelings of anxiety and helplessness following a disturbing experience. Such experiences may include a natural or human-made disaster, a threat or assault, or witnessing a death. PTSD may occur months or years after the event. It frequently occurs among firefighters, combat veterans, and people whose homes and communities have been swept away by natural disasters or who have been victims of accidents or interpersonal violence. A disorder that follows a distressing event outside the range of normal human experience and that is characterized by features such as intense fear, avoidance of stimuli associated with the event, and reliving of the event.
Anxiety Disorders
-Acute Stress Disorder
Like PTSD, acute stress disorder is characterized by feelings of anxiety and helplessness that are caused by a traumatic event. However, PTSD can occur 6 months or more after the traumatic event and tends to persist. Acute stress disorder occurs within a month of the event and lasts from 2 days to 4 weeks. Women who have been raped, for example, experience acute distress that tends to peak in severity about 3 weeks after the assault. Yet the same women may go on to experience PTSD.
Origins of Anxiety Disorders
-Psychological Views
According to the psychodynamic perspective, phobias symbolize conflicts originating in childhood. Psychodynamic theory explains generalized anxiety as persistent difficulty in repressing primitive impulses. Obsessions are explained as leakage of unconscious impulses, and compulsions are seen as acts that allow people to keep such impulses partly repressed. For example, fixation in the anal stage is theorized to be connected with development of traits such as excessive neatness of the sort that could explain some cases of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Some learning theorists, particularly behaviorists, consider phobias to be conditioned fears that were acquired in early childhood. Avoidance of feared stimuli is reinforced by the reduction of anxiety. Observational learning may also play a role in the acquisition of fears (Mineka & Oehlberg, 2008). If parents squirm, grimace, and shudder at the sight of mice, blood, or dirt on the kitchen floor, children might assume that these stimuli are awful and imitate their parents’ behavior. Cognitive theorists note that people’s appraisals of the magnitude of threats help determine whether they are traumatic and can lead to PTSD (Koster et al., 2009). People with panic attacks tend to misinterpret bodily cues and to view them as threats. Obsessions and compulsions may serve to divert attention from more frightening issues, such as “What am I going to do with my life?” When anxieties are acquired at a young age, we may later interpret them as enduring traits and label ourselves as “someone who fears __________” (you fill it in). We then live up to the labels. We also entertain thoughts that heighten and perpetuate anxiety, such as “I’ve got to get out of here” or “My heart is going to leap out of my chest.” Such ideas intensify physical signs of anxiety, disrupt planning, make stimuli seem worse than they really are, motivate avoidance, and decrease self-efficacy expectations. The belief that we will not be able to handle a threat heightens anxiety. The belief that we are in control reduces anxiety.
Origins of Anxiety Disorders
-Biological Views
Biological factors play key roles in anxiety disorders. They involve genetic factors, evolution, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system.
Dissociative Disorders
Mental processes such as thoughts, emotions, memory, consciousness, even knowledge of one’s own identity—the processes that make a person feel whole—may seem to be split off from one another. Disorders in which there are sudden, temporary changes in consciousness or self-identity.
Dissociative Disorders
-Dissociative amnesia
A person with dissociative amnesia is suddenly unable to recall important personal information (that is, explicit episodic memories). The loss of memory cannot be attributed to organic problems such as a blow to the head or alcoholic intoxication. It is thus a psychological dissociative disorder and not an organic one. In the most common form, the person cannot recall events for a number of hours after a stressful incident, as in warfare or in the case of an uninjured survivor of an accident. In generalized dissociative amnesia, people forget their entire lives. Amnesia may last for hours or years. A dissociative disorder marked by loss of memory or self-identity; skills and general knowledge are usually retained.
Dissociative Disorders
- Dissociative Identity Disorder
formerly: multiple personality disorder
In dissociative identity disorder, two or more identities or personalities, each with distinct traits and memories, “occupy” the same person. Each identity may or may not be aware of the others or of events experienced by the others. A disorder in which a person appears to have two or more distinct identities or personalities that may alternately emerge.
