Chapter 15 Flashcards
Mental Disorder
Any behaviour or emotional state that causes an individual great suffering, is self-destructive, seriously impairs the person’s ability to work or get along with others, or endangers others or the community
Insanity
Legal term only involving mental illness and whether person is aware of consequences and can control their behaviour
3 Varying definitions of mental disorders
- Mental disorder as a violation of cultural standards
- Mental disorder as emotional distress
- Mental disorder as behaviour that is self-destructive or harmful to others
What is typically used in classifying mental disorders?
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
What is the primary goals of DSM?
To be descriptive and to provide clear diagnostic categories. DSM gives ability to make diagnosis but not how to treat it.
What does the DSM use for diagnosing mental disorders? (7)
Lists symptoms, onset, predisposing factors, course of disorder, prevalence, sex ratio, and cultural issues in diagnosis
What is ‘The Single Axis Approach’?
More unified approach that reflexts latest scientific knowledge
Improves the ways patients.
How do supporters view the new categories of DSM disorders?
Supporters of new categories answer that is important to distinguish disorders precisely
How do critics view the new categories of DSM disorders?
Critics point to economic reasons: diagnoses are needed for insurance reasons so therapists will be compensated.
What are 4 problems with the DSM?
- The danger of overdiagnosis (e.g., ADHD)
- The power of diagnostic labels
- The confusion of serious mental disorders with normal problems
- The illusion of objectivity and universality (e.g., drapetomania (tendency of slaves to want to escape), reflect cultural & social prejudices)
What are some benefits with the DSM?
When DSM used correctly, in conjunction with valid objective tests, improves reliability of diagnosis
What are Culture-Bound Syndromes?
Disorders that are specific to a particular culture context.
What are Projective Tests?
Tests used to infer a person’s motives, conflicts, and unconscious dynamics on the basis of the person’s interpretations of ambiguous stimuli (e.g. Behaviour assessment Scale for Children BASC)
What are Objective Tests?
Standardized objective questionnaires requiring written responses; typically include scales that people rate themselves on.
What is the Rorschach Inkblot Test?
An example of a projective test.
What are some drawbacks f projective testing?
Tests lack reliability and validity (although some have tried to develop comprehensive scoring systems for responses). They are also sometimes used inappropriately.
What is a common example of an objective test?
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
What is Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)?
Contains 10 clinical scales for problems such as depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, introversion
Contains 4 validity scales to indicate whether responder is lying, defensive, or evasive
Has been revised but still some cultural differences in scores on certain sub-scales.
What is Anxiety?
- A general state of apprehension or psychological tension
- Can be adaptive as they energize us to cope with danger
What are Anxiety Disorders?
When fear and anxiety become detached from actual danger.
List some anxiety disorders. (4)
Chronic anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder
What aid Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
A continuous state of anxiety marked by feelings of worry and dread, apprehension, difficulties in concentration, and signs of motor tension.
What is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder? (own category in DSM5)
Person who has experienced a traumatic or life-threatening event has symptoms such as psychic numbing, reliving of the trauma, and increased physiological arousal.
What is a Panic Disorder?
An anxiety disorder in which a person experiences recurring panic attacks, feelings of impending doom or death, accompanied by physiological symptoms such as rapid breathing and dizziness.
What is a phobia?
An exaggerated, unrealistic fear of a specific situation, activity, or object.
What is Social Phobia?
Irrational fear where sufferers become extremely anxious in situations in which they will be observed by others, worrying that they will do or say something that will be excruciatingly humiliating or embarrassing .
What is Agoraphobia?
Set of phobias, often set off by a panic attack, involving the basic fear of being away from a safe place or person.
What is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? (own category in DSM5)
- An anxiety disorder in which a person feels trapped in repetitive, persistent thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive, ritualized behaviours (compulsions) designed to reduce anxiety
- May involve depletion of serotonin from prefrontal cortex (may create cognitive rigidity)
What are Mood Disorders?
Disturbances in mood ranging from extreme depression to extreme mania.
What is Major Depression?
A mood disorder involving disturbances in emotion, behaviour, cognition, and body function.
What is Bipolar Disorder?
A mood disorder in which episodes of both depression and mania (excessive euphoria) occur. No longer considered a mood disorder in DSM5.
What is the vulnerability-stress model?
Approaches that emphasize how individual vulnerabilities interact with external stress or circumstances to produce mental disorders
List 4 origins of depression.
- Genetic Factors (Adoption studies, 5-HTT gene, levels of serotonin & cortisol)
- Life experiences and circumstances (experiences of violence/domestic violence.)
- Losses of important relationships
- Cognitive Habits (permanent and uncontrollable attributions, rumination)
What are Personality Disorders?
A pattern in the personality that involves unchanging, maladaptive traits that cause great distress or an inability to get along with others.
What are NOT causes of personality disorders?
Not caused by medical conditions, stress, or situations that involve temporary changes in behaviour.
What is paranoid personality disorder?
Characterized by unreasonable, excessive suspiciousness and mistrust, and irrational feelings of being persecuted by others.
What is Narcissistic personality disorder?
Characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance and self-absorption.
What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Characterized by intense but unstable relationships, fear of abandonment by others, unrealistic self-image, & emotional volatility.
What is Psychopathy?
Characterized by lack of remorse, empathy, anxiety, and other social emotions, the use of deceit and manipulation, and impulsive thrill seeking.
What is Antisocial Personality Disorder?
Characterized by a lifelong pattern of irresponsible, antisocial behaviour such as law-breaking, violence, and other impulsive, reckless acts.
–>Psychopaths also meet criteria for APD but APD patients do not meet the criteria for psychopathy
What are some factors involved in ADP and Psychopathy?
- Abnormalities in the CNS
- Impaired frontal lobe functioning
- Genetic Influences
What is Substance abuse?
A maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.
What is the biological model of addiction?
Addiction, whether to alcohol or any other drug, is due primarily to a person’s biochemistry, metabolism, and genetic predisposition.
What is the Learning Model of Addiction?
Examines the role of the environment, learning, and culture in encouraging or discouraging drug abuse and addiction.
What are 4 major findings with the Learning Model of Addiction?
- Addiction patterns vary according to culutral practices and the social environment.
- Policies of total abstinence tend to increase rates of addiction rather than reduce them.
- Not all addicts have withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking a drug.
- Addiction depends not on properties of the drug alone but also the reasons for taking it.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (or multiple personality disorder)
Controversial disorder marked by apparent appearance within one person of two or more distinct personalities, each with its own name and traits
What are the believed roots of MPD?
- -> Some clinicians argue MPD originates as means of coping with childhood trauma which produces “splitting”
- -> Others believe many cases may be generated unwittingly by clinicians through suggestive technique/hypnosis
What is the socio-cognitive explanation of MPD?
Ability of some troubled, highly imaginative individuals to produce many different “personalities” is an extreme form of ability we all have to present different aspects of our personalities to others.
Schizophrenia
Psychotic disorder marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized and coherent speech, inappropriate behaviour, ad cognitive impairments.
Psychosis
Distorted perceptions of reality and irrational behaviour.
Symptoms of Schizophrenia (5)
- Bizarre delusions
- Hallucinations, false sensory experiences that feel intensely real
- Disorganized, incoherent speech (involves word salad)
- Grossly disorganized and inappropriate behaviour
- Impaired cognitive abilities
* *May also involve being in a ‘flat’ or catatonic stupor
Contributing Factors to schizophrenia. (5)
- -> Genetic predispositions
- -> Structural brain abnormalities
- -> Neurotransmitter abnormalities
- -> Prencital problems or birth complications
- -> Adolescent abnormalities in brain development
What should one do if a friends is suicidal?
- -> Take all suicide threats seriously
- -> Know the danger signs
- -> Get involved
- -> Do not leave your friend alone
