Chapter 6 Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders and Dissociative Disorders Flashcards
1
Q
Somatic symptom disorders
A
- Someone who exaggerates the slightest physical symptom
- Many people continually run to the doctor even though there is nothing really wrong with them.
- Preoccupation with their health or appearance becomes so great that it dominates their lives.
- An excessive or maladaptive response to physical symptoms or to associated health concerns
2
Q
Dissociative disorders
A
- Lose their identity entirely and assume a new one or they lose their memory or sense of reality and are unable to function
- Disorder in which individuals feel detached from themselves or their surroundings, and reality, experience, and identity disintegrate.
3
Q
Somatic symptom disorder
A
- Patients who came to see him with seemingly endless lists of somatic complaints for which he could find no medical basis
- Patients returned shortly with either the same complaints or new lists containing slight variations
4
Q
Illness anxiety disorder
A
- “Hypochondriasis”
- Physical symptoms are either not experienced at the present time or are very mild, but severe anxiety is focused on the possibility of having or developing a serious disease.
- If one or more physical symptoms are relatively severe and are associated with anxiety and distress the diagnosis would be somatic symptom disorder
- The concern is primarily with the idea of being sick instead of the physical symptom itself.
- In any case the threat seems so real that reassurance from physicians does not seem to help.
5
Q
Psychological factors affecting medical condition
A
- A related somatic symptom disorder
- The presence of a diagnosed medical condition such as asthma, diabetes, or severe pain clearly caused by a medical condition such as cancer that is adversely affected (increased in frequency or severity) by one or more psychological or behavioral factors.
- These behavioral or psychological factors would have a direct influence on the course or perhaps the treatment of the medical condition
6
Q
Conversion disorders (Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder)
A
- Generally have to do with physical malfunctioning, such as paralysis, blindness, or difficulty speaking (aphonia), without any physical or organic pathology to account for the malfunction.
- Some suggest that some kind of neurological disease is affecting sensory-motor systems, although conversion symptoms can mimic the full range of physical malfunctioning
- May include total mutism and the loss of the sense of touch
- Some people have seizures- psychological in origin, because no significant electroencephalogram (EEG) changes can be documented
- These “seizures” are usually called psychogenic non-epileptic seizures
- Globus hystericus- the sensation of a lump in the throat that makes it difficult to swallow, eat, or sometimes talk.
7
Q
Malingering
A
- Faking
2. Deliberate faking of a physical or psychological disorder motivated by gain.
8
Q
Factitious disorders
A
- Fall somewhere between malingering and conversion disorders
- Under voluntary control, as with malingering, but there is no obvious reason for voluntarily producing the symptoms except, possibly, to assume the sick role and receive increased attention.
- May extend to other members of the family
9
Q
Derealization
A
- Your sense of the reality of the external world is lost
- Things may seem to change shape or size
- People may seem dead or mechanical
- These sensations of unreality are characteristic of the dissociative disorders because, in a sense, they are a psychological mechanism whereby one “dissociates” from reality
- Depersonalization is often part of a serious set of conditions in which reality, experience, and even identity seem to disintegrate.
- Situation in which the individual loses his or her sense of the reality of the external world.
10
Q
Depersonalization-derealization disorder
A
- When feelings of unreality are so severe and frightening that they dominate an individual’s life and prevent normal functioning
- When severe depersonalization and derealization are the primary problem
- Absence of the subjective experience of emotion
11
Q
Dissociative amnesia
A
- Includes several patterns
- Dissociative disorder featuring the inability to recall personal information, usually of a stressful or traumatic nature.
- Forgetting is selective for traumatic events or memories rather than generalized.
12
Q
Generalized amnesia
A
- Condition in which a person loses memory of all personal information, including his or her own identity.
- May be lifelong or may extend from a period in the more recent past, such as 6 months or a year previously
13
Q
Localized or selective amnesia
A
- A failure to recall specific events, usually traumatic, that occur during a specific period.
- Memory loss limited to specific times and events, particularly traumatic events.
14
Q
Dissociative fugue
A
- A subtype of dissociative amnesia
- Memory loss revolves around a specific incident- an unexpected trip
- Dissociative disorder featuring sudden, unexpected travel away from home, along with an inability to recall the past, sometimes with assumption of a new identity.
- Mostly, individuals just take off and later find themselves in a new place, unable to to remember why or how they got there.
- Usually they have left behind an intolerable situation.
- Fugue states usually end rather abruptly, and the individual returns home, recalling most, if not all, of what happened.
- The disintegrated experience is more than memory loss, involving at least some disintegration of identity, if not the complete adoption of a new one.
15
Q
dissociative trance disorder (DTD)
A
Altered state of consciousness in which the person believes firmly that he or she is possessed by spirits; considered a disorder only where there is distress and dysfunction.
