Chapter 15 - Psychological disorders Flashcards
What is a demonic model?
View of mental illness in which odd behaviour, hearing voices, or talking to oneself was attributed to evil spirits infesting the body
What is a medical model?
View of mental illness as due to a physical disorder requiring medical treatment
What is asylum?
Institution for people with mental illnesses created in the fifteenth century
What is moral treatment?
Approach to mental illness calling for dignity, kindness and respect for those with mental illness
What is deinstitutionalization?
Governmental policy in the 1960’s/70s that focused on releasing hospitalized psychiatric patients into the community and closing mental hospitals
What are labelling theorists?
Scholars who argue that psychiatric diagnoses exert powerful negative effects on people’s perceptions and behaviours
What is DSM?
Diagnostic system containing the American Psychiatric association (APA) criteria for mental disorders
What is prevalence?
Percentage of people within a population who have a specific mental disorder
What is comorbidity?
Co-occurence of two or more diagnoses within the same person
What is the categorical model?
Model in which a mental disorder differs from normal functioning in kind rather than degree
What is the dimensional model?
Model in which a mental disorder differs from normal functioning in degree rather then kind
What is the insanity defense?
Legal defence proposing that people shouldn’t be held legally responsible for their actions if they weren’t of “sound mind” when committing them
What is involuntary commitment?
Procedure of placing some people with mental illnesses in a psychiatric hospital or other facility based on their potential danger to themselves or others, or their inability to care for themselves
What is somatic symptom disorder?
Condition marked by physical symptoms that suggest an underlying medical illness, but are actually psychological in origin
What is illness anxiety disorder?
An individual’s continual preoccupation with the notion that he or she has aa serious physical disease
What is generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)?
Continual feelings of worry, anxiety, physical tension, and irritability across many areas of life functioning
What is a panic attack?
Brief, intense episode of extreme fear characterized by sweating, dizziness, light-headedness, racing heartbeat, and feelings of impeding death or going crazy
What is panic disorder?
Repeated and unexpected panic attacks, along with either persistent concerns about future attacks or a change in personal behaviour in an attempt to avoid them
What is a phobia?
Intense fear of an object or situation that’s greatly out of proportion to its actual threat