Chapter 12 - Mental Illness Flashcards
Psychological Disorders
a syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in a persons cognition, emotion regulation or behavior
- Thoughts emotions or behaviors are maladaptive or dysfunctional and are often accompanied by distress
DSM-V
a unformed system used to classify disorders which explains and lists every illness.
- You identify the abnormal behavior and associate it with a disorder that meets the criteria
Critics of DSM-V
- It casts too wide of a net and brings in any kind of behavior
○ This means that everyday life can be a symptom for a disorder
○ E.g. a person experiencing normal grief can be assumed having a depressive disorder- Labels can create stigma
- Variability in diagnosis from field trials
- Labels can create stigma
Risks and Benefits of Labels around Psychological Disorders
Labels Risks:
- Can be self-fulfilling
- Makes mentally ill individuals appear violent and creates challenges in society
Label Benefits:
- Guide medical diagnosis and treatment
Help mental professionals communicate about their cases and study the causes of treatments
5 Axis of DMS-V
A1: clinical Disorders
- A measurement of all the different acute symptoms there are
- Includes anxiety attacks and manic episodes
A2: personality Disorders
- The conditions that effect intellectual ability and personality disorders
A3: General Medical Conditions
- Neurological or medical complications that stem from psychological conditions
A4: psychosocial and environmental problems
- Social sources of psychological stress
- E.g. romantic fallout, loss of employment
A5: global assessment function
- A numeric rating of a patients ability to function in general
Anxiety Disorder
characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety
Theories of Anxiety Disorders
- Conditioning: when one learns to associate two or more things that occur together
○ Can explain how frightening events trigger phobias- Cognition: excessive anxiety coming from illogical, irrational thought processes
- Biology: the impact of genetic make up and the brain in creating a predisposition towards anxieties, OCD or PTSD
- Cognition: excessive anxiety coming from illogical, irrational thought processes
Types of Cognitive Anxieties
○ Magnification: the tendency to interpret situations as far more dangerous, harmful or important than they actually are
○ All or nothing thinking: the tendency to believe that one’s performance must be perfect or the result will be a total failure
○ Overgeneralization: the tendency to interpret a single negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat and failure
○ Minimization: the tendency to give little or no importance to ones successes for positive events or traits
Types of Anxiety Disorders: GAD
when individuals continually feel tense, fearful and in a state of autonomic NS arousal
- Source can be unknown
Types of Anxiety Disorders: Panic Disorder
characterized by unpredictable minute long episodes of intense dread
- Source can be unknown
Types of Anxiety Disorders: Phobias
characterized by persistent, irrational fear towards an object, activity or situation
- Individuals tend to avoid triggers that arouse their fear - A strong fear becomes a phobia if it provokes a compelling but irrational desire to avoid the dreaded situation.
Types of Anxiety: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts(obsessions), actions(compulsions or both
- Becomes a disorder when obsessive thoughts persistently interfere with everyday life and causes distress
Types of Anxiety: PostTraumatic Stress Disorder
characterized by haunting memories, nightmares and other symptoms for weeks after a severely threatening and uncontrollable event
- Victims are people who experience a traumatic event; disaster survivors - The higher the distress the greater the risk of PTSD
Mood Disorder
emotional extremes
Depressive Disorders
characterized by profound and persistent sadness, despair and or a decreased interest in things
- Impairs ones ability to function
Types of Mood Disorder: Major Depressive Disorder
a person experiences prolonged sense of hopelessness and lethargy
- Symptoms must occur every day and last for 2 or more weeks
Types of Mood Disorders:
Bipolar:
a person alternates between the feelings of hopelessness and mania
- Risen among adolescents
- mania: unreasonable elation and hyperactivity
Theories of Mood Disorders: Psychoanalytical
depression results from anger at authority figures from childhood turned inward on the self(imagined or real) internalizing as guilt, shame, self hatred and self blame
Theories of Mood Disorders: Biological
look at the function of serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine systems in the brain
Theories of Mood Disorders: Behavioral perspective
a learned theory which links depression to learned helplessness
○ Individuals view themselves as helplessness to escape a situation and experience negative moods
Theories of Mood Disorder: Cognitive
disturbed or illogical thinking
Personality Disorder and characteristics:
inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning
Characteristics of Personality Disorder:
- Withdrawal or avoidance of social contact
- Insecurity
- Instability
- Manipulative behaviors
Theories for Personality Disorders: Psychoanalytical
blame is due to an inadequate resolution to the oedipal complex resulting in a poorly developed superego
Theories for Personality Disorders: Cognitive
set of learned behaviors that have become maladaptive which are learned early on in life
○ Viewed as illogical
Theories for Personality Disorders: Biological
results from lower than normal stress hormones
Theories for Personality Disorders: Sociocultural
disturbances in the family, child abuse, child neglect and overly strict or protective parents.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
lack of conscience for wrongdoing even towards friends and family members
- Low EQ
- People can be aggressive and ruthless or clever con artists
- Aka sociopaths or psychopaths
Two Types of Antisocial Personality Disorders
- Psychopaths: people who are incapable of empathy and forming loving relationships but they can pretend and they have no moral compass so do not feel guilt.
- Born this way, nature argument- Sociopaths: people who are capable of empathy and guilt and are usually impulsive, hot tempered and erratic
- Created due to traumatic experience, nurture argument
- Sociopaths: people who are capable of empathy and guilt and are usually impulsive, hot tempered and erratic
Borderline Personality Disorder:
a mental illness centering on the inability to manage emotions effectively occurring in the context of relationships
- Begins adolescence or early adulthood Loss neglect, bullying and forms of abuse can also lead to the development of BPD
Avoidant Personality Disorder
extreme social inhibition and social avoidance due to feelings of inadequacy and hypersensitivity to criticism
- Stem from fear of rejection or disapproval - Preoccupied with criticism or rejection in social situations - Views themselves as socially inept or inferior to others
Dissociative Identity Disorders
individual exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities
- Aka multiple personality disorder
- Original personality denies any awareness of the other(s)
Schizophrenia
a disease where the mind has suffered a split from reality and manifests itself through delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and or inappropriate emotional expressions
- Victims can display both positive and negative symptoms:
○ Positive symptoms add
○ Negative symptoms take away
Symptoms of Schizophrenia:
- Disturbed Perceptions and Beliefs
- Disorganized Speech
- Diminished and inappropriate Emotions and Actions
Types of Schizophrenia
- Paranoid: preoccupation with delusions
- Disorganized: disorganized speech or behavior or inappropriate emotions
- Catatonic: immobility or excessive purposeless movement
- Undifferentiated: many and varied symptoms(two or more of the above symptoms)
Eating Disorders: Anorexia Nerosa
when people maintain a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight
- The fear of being fat and begins often with dieting that doesn’t stop
Eating Disorders: Bulimia Nervosa
person alternates binge eating with purging or fasting
Eating Disorders: Binge Eating Disorders
significant binge eating followed by distress, disgust or guilt but without the purging or fasting
