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Question 0

2 different types of treatments for psychological dissorder

Answer 0

biology based treatments (approached like a disease)
and
behavioural- based psychotherapy (treated more like its caused by emotional distress)

Question 1

the history of mental illness

Answer 1

• in the mid-late 1800’s people were housed in huge institutions (basically they just wanted to warehouse as many mentally ill as they could find)
• in the 2nd half of the 20th c. there was a move away from this, instead they wanted to see if they could be treated within the community, and also wanted to use drugs instead of having to institutionalize people

Question 2

psychological dissorder and drugs

Answer 2

many dissorders are treated by medication, there are 4 major types:

• antipsychotics
• antidepressants
• tranquilizers
• lithium carbonate

Question 3

antipsychotics

Answer 3

used to treat the posotive symptoms of schizo. by reducing activity of the dopamine circuits

• side effects are: tremors, drymouth
• also they dont reduce the negative symptoms
  (eg. thorazine, haldol, clozaril)

Question 4

antidepressants

Answer 4

eg. monoamine oxidase inhibitors(nardil), tricyclic antidepressants (elavil), selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors (prozac)
-these are treating depression, anxiety, phobias, and OCD
basically they eleviate distress
-side effects: drymouth, headaches, nausea, restlessness, etc, etc
-there are some side effects that are actually quite severe
-

Question 5

how do anti depressants in general work?

Answer 5

• they work by increasing NE, Seratonin, or dopamine, which promotes calmness and increased arousal
• they work on the synaptic gaps between neurons in terms of the amount of neurotransmitters available to stimulate the next cell over

Question 6

how does tricyclic antidepressants work?

Answer 6

inhibit reuptake at serotonin and norepinephrine synapses, which elevates activity at both ends of the synapses
-these are neurotranmitters that are related to euphoria and arousal

Question 7

how do MAO inhibitors work?

Answer 7

-the dissable MAO enzymes that would usually metabolize and inactivate neurotransmitters at the three synapses

Question 8

how do selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors work?

Answer 8

slow the reuptake at seratonin synapses, so activity is increased only at serotonin synapses

Question 9

Tranquilizers

Answer 9

eg. valium, xanax
- mimics the neurotransmitter GABA, which produces a powerful calming and blissful effect
- best suited for treating probs with high anxiety associated with phobias and panic dissorders
- it is highly addictive

Question 10

lithium bicarbonate

Answer 10

• used for bipolar disorder
• it has the effect of stabilizing of mederating the moods by moderatign the levels of norepinepherine
• side effects: kidney damage, tremors
• too little of the drug doesnt help at all, too much may be fatal

Question 11

problems with medicating psychological disorders:

Answer 11

• placebo: people may get better b\c of what they expect the drug to do, and after the excitement died down there is no effect
• people stop taking them: its a high expectation for people to consistently take them when most people have a mental dissorder
• too much, too little, just right: for the treatment to be effective if must be just right
• long term complications: after many years it can be life threatening, especially certain ones
• over or wrong prescription: sometimes there isn’t need for those meds
• only helps if biology is the cause of the problem: if not its only a “bandaid”, wont help if the cause is environmental

Question 12

other biological strategies for treatment: psychosurgery: prefrontal lobotomy

Answer 12

-psychosurgery (common in the 30’s-50’s): prefrontal lobotomy (common treatment for schizo.) when you sever the prefrontal lobotomy from the rest of the brain people dont have symptoms of schizo anymore, but they basically dont have a personality anymore, and also eliminates a number of things for healthy finctioning

Question 13

other biological strategies for treatment: psychosurgery: cingulotomy

Answer 13

in present day

• involves burning holes in the brains frontal lobes
• can be used in severe OCD
• not much effectiveness

Question 14

other biological strategies for treatment: electroconvulsive thearapy (ECT)

Answer 14

• involves passing electric current through the brain, triggering a 1 min seizure
• actually effective in extreme suicidal cases of major depression
• reletive=ly safe, but someimes may be memory probs and brain damage
• the history of ECT though is actually pretty bad

Question 15

Psychthearapies: psychodynamic therapy

Answer 15

talking at length, over many sessions, over many years, with an expert in this therapy to figure out what is going on in your unconscious or subconscious, all they do is take notes basically which will enchourage transference (the client acting out unconscious things through their reactions with the analyst). nowadays they just target specific probs so that the therapy isn’t so long or costly

• to get this info they do psychoanalysis
• psychoanalysis: the client talks about everything about themselves (dreams, childhood thoughts, etc), then from that the psychoanalyst’s job is to figure out what unconscious conflicts and desires and such are causing the psychological problems
• this is sometimes called insight therapy cause you get insight into your problem then it goes away
• the goal of this is to let people control their poblems, by becoming aware of the unconscious cause of the prob.
• sometimes they use free association (i say button, you say ___)

Question 16

psychotherapies: object relations theory

Answer 16

the idea is that your future relationships are related to your childhood ones

• seeks insight into how current relationship probs might originate from childhood ones
• basically just a more efficient way of psychoanalysis

Question 17

psychotherapies: behaviour-based

Answer 17

• idea that all behaviours are related to prior stimulus and response (we might have maladaptive responses to certain things)
• the goal is to make you unlearn maladaptive behaviours
• they do that by finding out what the maladaptive ways are that you act, and what in the environment rewards you for acting in those ways?
• they try to make it so that the client is rewarded for not doing to behaviour instead

Question 18

psychotherapies: systematic desensitization

Answer 18

• good for treating phobias
• part of the behaviour approach to thearapy
• if someone is afraid of something, through this process you would make them replace the fear with something else (usually relaxation)
• start mild (imaginig) ,then more and more (put this snake on you)
• this treatment is very effective

Question 19

psychotherapies: aversion thearapy

Answer 19

• if you want to quit someting, you use a learning process to help
• using classical conditioning
• if the response is usually good, you change the response
• this is done by combining the act with an emetic drug (make them feel sick)
• everytime they do the act they will feel sick even without the drug

Question 20

psychotherapies: exposure (flooding)

Answer 20

• good for phobias
• generally people avoid what they are afraid of, so they never learn that they are actually gonna be ok
• with exposure you force people to face their fears
• the idea is that people will replace fear with a more rational response
• but the goal is actually to overwhelm the person with fear
• kiind of a quick fix

Question 21

psychotherapies: behavioural records

Answer 21

-when behaviour is maladaptive , the client keeps a diary and the therapist discovers what reward maintains their behaviour

Question 22

psychotherapies: skills training

Answer 22

• involves teaching people to respond in more productive ways than what they are doing (such as when you punish a child, you have to tell them what they should be doing instead)
• involves a lot of role playing and showing them what they shoudl be doing