3.1 Intro to Psych Flashcards
What are the 3 characteristics of mental illness?
- common
- stigmatising
- treatable
What are 3 stats regarding how common mental illness is?
- 1 in 3 people will have a mental health disorder in their lifetime severe enough to see a clinician
- 1 in 3 GP consultations have a major mental health component, often entirely mental but also mental linked with physical.
- Most People fully recover from them provided they are adequately treated and supported
What are 3 stars involving how stigmatising mental illness is?
- 3 in 4 people feel stigmatised: self, from friends and family, society in general, from medical profession
- 10% of NHS funding
- six weeks in most undergrad courses
What is stigma?
A fundamental mindset which attaches blame and lack of acceptance or lack of understanding of that disorder.
What are some available treatment options for mental illness?
- Psychotherapies
- talking therapies
- social therapies
- medication
What are four difference between mental and physical illness?
- People often don’t perceive themselves to be ill: no “therapeutic contract”; reluctance to accept treatments; use of Mental Health Act (50,000 detentions per year)
- No scientific basis to diagnosis: similar to 18th century medicine; diagnose by symptom cluster, not aetiology or pathology; uncertainty about diagnosis; dispute about existence of mental illness
- Perceived lack of treatment
- Agents of social control
What are panic attacks?
Periods of intense anxiety, abnormal because the degree of anxiety is disabling; last 10-15 minutes then subside
What are four symptoms of panic attacks?
Sudden fear
Heart racing
Shaking
Dry mouth
What is clomipramine?
Anti-depressant with a very good evidence base for treating OCD
What is psychic anxiety?
Feeling of fear or dread
Interrupts our daily life to the extent that it becomes disabling
Some people don’t report it as it’s quite difficult to get across exactly how you feel psychologically during these attacks
What are some physical symptoms of psychic anxiety?
- palpitations
- sweating
- dry mouth
- splanchnic vasoconstriction (butterflies)
- tremor
- paraesthesia (pins and needles)
- depersonalisation (feel disconnected from your surroundings)
- syncope (fainting)
Why is anxiety so bad?
- release of adrenaline which makes your heart beat fast
- makes you think you’re having a heart attack so more adrenaline is released
- then you get more physical symptoms and you get feedback from the symptoms
- then you get more adrenaline released and the psychological response to adrenaline becomes abnormal
- the positive feedback loop increases anxiety
What are some obsessive symptoms of OCD?
- ego-dystonic thoughts (make you feel uncomfortable but are your own)
- repetitive, circular ruminations
- may be bizarre and sound delusional
- insight maintained (aware that own thoughts are senseless and ridiculous)
- unbidden and resisted
- resistance leads to anxiety
What are some compulsive symptoms of OCD?
- motor response to obsessional thoughts
- often ritualistic, stereotyped and precise
- start again if interrupted or doubt
- e.g. hand washing, counting, arranging and symmetry, checking door locks
What can anxiety be classified as?
- generalised anxiety disorder (feel anxious all the time)
- panic disorder (crescendo/decrescendo disabling anxiety)
- agoraphobia (fear of open spaces, don’t want to leave the home)
- simple phobia (abnormal, irrational like spiders, snakes and heights)
- social phobia (fear of scrutiny)
- OCD
- PTSD
