Ch.14 "Psychological Disorders" Flashcards
Medical model:
the conceptualization of psychological disorders as diseases that, like physical diseases, have biological causes, defined symptoms, and possible cures
Diagnosis:
seeking to determine the nature of the patient’s mental disease by assessing symptoms
Symptoms:
behaviors, thoughts, and emotions suggestive of an underlying abnormal syndrome.
Syndrome:
a coherent cluster of symptoms usually due to a single cause
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth edition, text revision) “DSM-IV-TR”:
a classification system that describes the features used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from other, similar problems.
To classify as a disorder, its symptoms must:
involve disturbances in behavior, thoughts, or emotions
be associated with significant personal distress or impairment
stem from an internal dysfunction (biological, psychological, or both)
Psychological disorders exist along a continuum from normal to abnormal without:
a bright line of separation
Comorbidity:
the co-occurrence of two or more disorders in a single individual
Etiology:
a specific pattern of causes for different psychological disorders.
Prognosis:
a typical course over time and susceptibility of treatment and cure
An integrated perspective for understanding most psychological disorders includes what factors?
biological, psychological, and environmental
Diathesis-stress model:
a person may be predisposed for a psychological disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress.
Intervention-causation fallacy:
the assumption that if a treatment is effective, it must address the cause of the problem.
People seldom seek help for diagnosable psychological disorders because:
they will be treated differently; labeled
Situation-related anxiety is:
normal and can be adaptive
Anxiety disorder:
the class of mental disorder in which anxiety is the predominant feature
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD):
chronic excessive worry is accompanied by three or more of the following symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, concentration problems, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbance; biological and psychological factors
Concordance rate:
the percentage of pairs that share a characteristic
Phobic disorders:
characterized by marked, persistent, and excessive fear and avoidance of specific objects, activities, or situations.
Specific phobia:
an irrational fear of a particular object or situation that markedly interferes with an individual’s ability to function
Five categories of specific phobias:
animals
natural environments
situations
blood, injections, injury
others
Social phobia:
irrational fear of being publicly humiliated or embarrassed
Preparedness theory:
people are instinctively predisposed toward certain fears.
Panic disorder:
the sudden occurrence of multiple psychological and physiological symptoms that contribute to a feeling of stark terror
Agoraphobia:
fear of venturing into public places
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD):
repetitive, intrusive thoughts and ritualistic behaviors that interfere significantly with an individual’s functioning
Mood disorders:
mental disorders that have mood disturbance as their predominant feature; depression and bipolar disorder
Major depressive disorder:
a severely depressed mood that lasts 2 or more weeks and is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness and lack of pleasure, lethargy, and sleep and appetite disturbances
Dysthymia:
the same cognitive and bodily problems as in depression are present, but they are less severe and last longer, persisting for at least 2 years.
Double depression:
Major depressive disorder + Dysthymia
a moderately depressed mood that persists for at least 2 years and is punctuated by periods of major depression.
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD):
recurrent depressive episodes in a seasonal pattern.
Postpartum depression:
depression following childbirth due to hormonal imbalances
Helplessness theory:
individuals who are prone to depression automatically attribute negative experiences to causes that are internal, stable, and global.
Werther effect:
suicide being contagious
Dissociative disorder:
a condition in which normal cognitive processes are severely disjointed and fragmented, creating significant disruptions in memory, awareness, or personality that can vary in length from minutes to years.
Dissociative Identity Disorder:
the presence within an individual of two or more distinct identities that at different times take control of the individual’s behavior
Dissociative amnesia:
the sudden loss of memory for significant personal information
Dissociative fugue:
the sudden loss of memory for one’s personal history, accompanied by an abrupt departure from home and the assumption of a new identity
Schizophrenia:
the profound disruption of basic psychological processes; a distorted perception of reality; altered or blunted emotion; and disturbances in thought, motivation, and behavior.
Delusion:
a false belief system, often bizarre and grandiose, that is maintained in spite of its irrationality
Hallucination:
a false perceptual experience that has a compelling sense of being real despite the absence of external stimulation.
Disorganized speech:
a severe disruption of verbal communication in which ideas shift rapidly and incoherently from one to another unrelated topic
Grossly disorganized behavior:
behavior that is inappropriate for the situation or ineffective in attaining goals, often with specific motor disturbances.
Catatonic behavior:
a marked decrease in all movement or an increase in muscular rigidity and overactivity
Negative symptoms:
emotional and social withdrawal; apathy; poverty of speech; and other indications of the absence or insufficiency of normal behavior, motivation, and emotion; things missing in people with schizophrenia
Five types of Schizophrenia:
Paranoid
Catatonic
Disorganized
Undifferentiated
Residual
Paranoid schizophrenia:
preoccupation with delusions and hallucinations
Catatonic schizophrenia:
immobility and stupor or agitated, purposeless motor activity
Disorganized schizophrenia:
disorganized speech and behavior and flat or inappropriate emotion
Undifferentiated types:
cases that do not neatly fall into the three main types of schizophrenia
Residual types:
for individuals who have substantially recovered from at least one schizophrenic episode but still have lingering symptoms
Early-onset disorders:
mental retardation, learning disorders, communication disorders, motor skill disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autistic disorder.
Autistic disorder:
abnormal or impaired development of communication and social interaction and a markedly restricted repertoire of activities or interests.
Dopamine hypothesis:
the idea that schizophrenia involves an excess of dopamine activity
Personality disorders:
disorders characterized by deeply ingrained, inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, or relating to others or controlling impulses that cause distress or impaired functioning.
Three main clusters of personality disorders:
odd/eccentric- paranoid
dramatic/erratic- antisocial
anxious/inhibited- obsessive-compulsive
Antisocial personality disorder (APD):
a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues to adulthood.
