disorders Flashcards
Normal means …
Flexible, adaptive
Abnormal means …
Inflexible, maladaptive
Freud’s definition of normalcy is
the ability to love and to work (to form affiliative relationships and to be productive)
The DSM
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The DSM defines a disorder as
a pattern of psychological or behavioral symptoms that cause significant personal distress, and/or impairs functioning in important areas of life
Concordance rates
probabilities of experiencing the disorder if a close family member has it. none of the rates are 100%.
Diathesis
genetic predisposition
Diathesis-stress model
the genetic predisposition is only activated when the stress level is sufficient
Anxiety disorders have two common components:
physiological and behavioral
The physiological component of an anxiety disorder involves
the stress response
The behavioral component of an anxiety disorder involves
avoidance of feared situations (negative reinforcements), vigilance (confirmation bias), and impaired performance (optimal arousal curve, if you’re anxious you’ll surpass your optimal arousal)
Putative bases include
Amygdala-PFC connections, abnormalities in the HPA axis/low GABA levels, and attention bias to threat
The continuum of disorders ranges from _____ _____ to _____ ______
Major disorders, personality disorders
Major disorders
the more serious, “major” disorders. Like OCD.
Personality disorders
appear in adolescence or younger. they are related to the more serious major disorders and like those disorders, they involve inflexible, inappropriate behavioral patterns.
Free Floating Anxiety Disorders
occur in a variety of situations
Two types of free floating anxiety disorders:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is characterized by …
Persistent state of heightened tension (at least 6 months), hyper vigilance, and overreaction to mild stressors
Chronic stress, with its related results of corticosteroids, plays a role in generalized anxiety disorders because in the resistance stage of Selye’s model there are …
increased dendrites in the amygdala and decreased dendrites in the hippocampus
Panic Disorder is characterized by …
Sudden episodes of overwhelming terror, physiological symptoms like a heart attack (overreaction SNS)
To be diagnosed with panic disorder, the person has to have at least ___ attacks in ___ weeks
4, 4
“free floating” means
no triggers
panic attacks last for ____ amounts of time
limited
Specific Anxiety Disorders (now Trauma-Stress related disorders). 3 types:
Phobic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder
What is a phobia?
It is an irrational fear—disproportionate to actual danger.
Many phobias are based on things that our amygdala should respond to (but not overly respond to), for example …
heights, edges, strangers