Chapter 1 (Barlow) Flashcards
Psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress or impairment in functioning and a response that is not typical or culturally expected.
Psychological Disorder
Refers to a breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning.
Psychological Dysfunction
Scientific study of psychological disorders.
Psychopathology
Mental health professionals who take
a scientific approach to their clinical work
Scientist-practitioners
Patient “presents” with a specic problem or set of problems
Presenting problem
Represents the unique combination of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that make up a specific disorder.
Clinical description
Traditional shorthand way of
indicating why the person came to the clinic.
Presents
3 types of statistical data
Prevalence
Incidence
Sex ratio
How many people in the population as a whole have the disorder
Prevalence
How many new cases occur during a given period, such as a year
Incidence
What percentage of males and females have the disorder—and the typical age of onset, which oen diers from one disorder to another.
Sex ratio
Individual pattern that most disorders follow
Course
3 types of course
Chronic
Episodic
Time-limited
Disorder tend to last a long time,
sometimes a lifetime.
Chronic course
Individual is likely to recover within a few months only to suffer a recurrence of the disorder at a later time.
Episodic course
Disorder will improve without
treatment in a relatively short period with little or no risk of recurrence.
Time-limited course
2 types of onset
Acute
Insidious
Disorder begins suddenly
Acute onset
Disorder develop gradually over an extended period
Insidious onset
Anticipated course of a disorder
Prognosis
Study of changes in behaviour over time
Developmental psychology
Study of changes in abnormal behavior
Developmental psychopathology
Study of abnormal behavior across the entire age span
Life-span developmental psychopathology
Study of origins, has to do with why a disorder begins
Etiology
Humans have always supposed that agents outside our bodies and environment influence our behavior, thinking, and emotions; might be divinities, demons, spirits, or other phenomena such as magnetic fields or the moon or the stars
Supernatural model
Views psychological disorder as being possessed by a spirit
Demonological model
Individual is extremely upset and cannot function properly.
Distress or Impairment
Deviates from the average or the norm of the culture.
Atypical or Not Culturally Expected
Psychological disorder characterized by marked and persistent fear of an object or situation.
Phobia
Another term for psychological disorder.
Problematic abnormal behavior
Related concept that is also useful is to determine whether the behavior is out of the individual’s control
Harmful dysfunction
Being hysterical, too emotional, exaggerated, and has extreme emotions; treated as being possessed
Hysteria
Contagious manifestations; practiced continuously; persecutory delusions
Shared psychosis
Phenomenon of emotion contagion, in which the experience of an emotion seems to spread to those around us
Mass hysteria
If one person identifies a “cause” of the problem, others will probably assume that their own reactions have the same source.
Mob psychology
Speculated that the gravitational effects of the moon on bodily fluids might be a possible cause of mental
disorders
Paracelsus
Considered to be the father of modern Western medicine.
Hippocrates
Founder of modern psychiatry; used compassion and pioneering approach in treating mental illness in Europe during the time of witchcraft
Johann Weyer
4 humors of Hippocrates
Blood (Sanguine)
Yellow Bile (Choleric)
Black Bile (Melancholic)
Phlegm (Phlegmatic)
Humor of very positive people.
Blood/Sanguine
Humor of short-tempered people
Yellow bile/choleric
Humor of introspective and sentimental people; possible to commit suicide
Black bile/Melancholic
Humor of calm and unemotional people
Phlegm/Phlegmatic
Process where a carefully measured amount of blood was removed from the body, often with leeches.
Bleeding/Bloodletting
Sexually transmitted disease caused by a bacterial microorganism entering the brain, include believing that
everyone is plotting against you
Advanced syphilis
Psychological disorders characterized in part by beliefs that are not based in reality (delusions), perceptions that are not based in reality (hallucinations), or both
Psychosis
Procedure where they’ll be using increasingly higher dosages until,
finally, patients convulsed and became temporarily comatose
Insulin shock therapy
Drug that diminished hallucinatory and delusional thought processes in some patients; controlled agitation and aggressiveness.
Neuroleptics
Drug that seemed to reduce anxiety.
Benzodiazepines
First major approach in psychology; elaborate theory of the structure of the mind and the role of unconscious processes in determining behavior
Psychoanalysis
2nd major approach in psychology which focuses on how learning and adaptation affect the development of psychopathology
Behaviourism
Recalling and reliving emotional trauma that has been made unconscious and to release the accompanying tension.
Catharsis
Most comprehensive theory yet
constructed on the development and structure of our personalities.
Psychoanalytic model
Unconscious protective processes that keep primitive emotions associated with conflicts in check so that the ego can continue its coordinating function.
Defense mechanisms
Underlying assumption is that all of us could reach our highest potential, in all areas of functioning, if only we had the freedom to grow
Self-actualizing
Approach where the therapist takes a passive role, making as few
interpretations as possible.
Person-centered therapy
Complete and almost unqualified acceptance of most of the client’s feelings and actions, is critical to the humanistic approach.
Unconditional positive regard
Subjects simply reported on their inner thoughts and feelings after experiencing certain stimuli, but the results of this “armchair” psychology were inconsistent and discouraging to many experimental psychologists
Introspection
Process of reinforcing successive approximations to a final behavior or set of behaviors.
Shaping
Champion of the biological tradition in the United States
John P. Grey
Focus not only on psychological factors but also on social and cultural ones.
Psychosocial treatment
Strong psychosocial approach to mental disorders which included treating institutionalized patients as normally as possible in a setting that encouraged and reinforced normal social interaction, thus providing them with many opportunities for appropriate social and interpersonal contact.
Moral therapy
Relationship between current emotions and earlier events
Insight
Strong fears develop that the father may punish that lust by removing the son’s penis
Castration anxiety
Individual slowly accumulates adaptational capacities, skill in reality testing, and defenses.
Ego psychology
Theory of the formation of self concept and the crucial attributes of the self that allow an individual to progress toward health, or conversely, to develop neurosis.
Self-psychology
Wisdom accumulated by society and
culture that is stored deep in individual memories and passed
down from generation to generation.
Collective unconscious
Patients are instructed to say whatever comes to mind without the usual socially required censoring.
Free association
Therapist interprets the content of
dreams, supposedly rejecting the primary-process thinking of the
id, and systematically relates the dreams to symbolic aspects of
unconscious conflicts.
Dream analysis
Patients come to relate to the therapist much as they did to important figures in their childhood, particularly their parents.
Transference
Therapists project some of their own personal issues and feelings, usually
positive, onto the patient.
Countertransference
Efforts are made to identify trauma and active defense mechanisms, therapists use an eclectic mixture of tactics, with a social and interpersonal focus.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy
Sympathetic understanding of the
individual’s particular view of the world.
Empathy
Type of learning in which a neutral stimulus is paired with a response until it elicits that response.
Classical conditioning
Strength of the response to similar objects or people is usually a function of how similar these objects or people are.
Stimulus generalization
Individuals were gradually introduced to the objects or situations they feared so that their fear could extinguish; that is, they could test reality and see that
nothing bad happened in the presence of the phobic object or scene
Systematic desensitization
Type of learning in which behavior changes as a function of what follows the behavior.
Operant conditioning
States that behavior is either strengthened (likely to be repeated more frequently) or weakened (likely to occur less frequently) depending
on the consequences of that behavior.
Law of effect
