Exam 1 Flashcards
1
Q
What is a psychological disorder?
A
A psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress or impairment in functioning that is not typical or culturally expected
2
Q
Why is a psychological disorder hard to define?
A
~No clear boundaries between psychological and physical disorders (makes it difficult to diagnose
~Defined by a variety of concepts
~Consist of a cluster or syndrome of symptoms
-Patient may have only some of the symptoms and another patient with the same disorder can have different symptoms
-Symptoms must persist for some duration to constitute a disorder
~Normality and abnormality exist on a continuum
3
Q
What is a psychological dysfunction?
A
A breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning
4
Q
What is distress or impairment?
A
Behavior or feelings that cause the person pain
5
Q
What is a disability?
A
Impairment in one or more important area of functioning
6
Q
What are cultural bound disorders?
A
Culture plays such an important role in psychological disorders that some disorders are only found in a single culture
7
Q
What are the theories of psychological disorders?
A
Biological, psychodynamic, and behavioral/cognitive-behavioral
8
Q
What is syphilis?
A
STD caused by a bacterial microorganism entering the brain
9
Q
Why was syphilis so important for the biological theory?
A
Syphilis results in some symptoms similar to schizophrenia so it showed that biological factors can play an important role in psychological disorder and raised hopes of biological cures for other disorders
10
Q
What are the common therapies?
A
Insulin shock therapy, ECT, prefrontal lobotomy, and drug therapy (neuroleptics, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants)
11
Q
What is a prefrontal lobotomy?
A
Surgical procedure that destroys the tracts connecting the frontal lobes and lower centers of the brain
12
Q
What are the problems with benzodiazepines?
A
Has significant limitations - habit forming and interferes with mental activity and motor activity
13
Q
Who developed a classification that led to the DSM?
A
Emil Kraepelin
14
Q
What is the basic goal of psychodynamic theory?
A
To make the unconscious, conscious
15
Q
What is the psychodynamic theory?
A
Behavior influenced by the ongoing conflicts between opposing forces in the mind with most of these conflicts being unconscious
16
Q
What are the factors for all 3 psychodynamic theories?
A
Importance of the unconscious, conflictual nature of mental life, importance of early childhood experiences, and defense mechanisms
17
Q
What are the 3 types of psychodynamic theory?
A
Freud’s classical drive theory, object relations, and self-psychology
18
Q
What is the atypical or not culturally expected part of classifying a psychological disorder?
A
What constitutes a disorder depends on a society’s cultural values
19
Q
What can be said about abnormal behavior in cultural context?
A
Abnormal behavior may be expressed differently in different cultures; also, the same psychological disorder can have different symptoms in different cultures
20
Q
What are examples of culture-bound disorders?
A
Koro, Windigo, and anorexia nervosa
21
Q
What is the sexual and aggressive drive part of Freud’s classical drive theory?
A
We share non-human animals that have survival as their purpose in order to survive (sexual instinct-preservation of the species, human aggression survival)
22
Q
Why does the sexual and aggressive drive produce conflicts?
A
There are complex rules about when we can be aggressive and when we can exhibit sexual behavior and we are not easily satisfied
23
Q
What are the 4 additional concepts of classical drive?
A
Levels of consciousness, structure of personality (id, ego, superego), defense mechanisms, and psychosexual stages of development
24
Q
What are the three levels of consciousness?
A
Conscious (present awareness), preconscious (info from past experience or learning), and unconscious (primitive sexual and aggressive impulse, wishes, fantasies, and traumatic experiences)
25
What is the structure of personality?
How the id, ego, and superego balance and interact (conflict) that determines our behavior and how well we function
26
What is the id?
Unconscious, baser animal drives, libido, primary process thinking
27
What is the pleasure principle?
Doesn't take into account society's rules or anybody else's feelings
28
What is the ego?
Emerges from id in first year of life, partially conscious and unconscious, mediator, secondary process thinking
29
What is the reality principle?
Wants to satisfy the desires of the id but wants to do so in a manner that's not going to offend the superego or society's rules
30
What is the superego?
Splits off from ego, internalizes moral teachings, oedipal complex, partially conscious or unconscious, guilt or shame
31
What do defense mechanisms do?
Protect us from unpleasant emotions
32
What are unpleasant emotions that defense mechanisms protect us from?
Unacceptable impulse from id-neurotic anxiety, threats of punishment from superego-moral anxiety, and threats from outside world-reality anxiety
33
What else do defense mechanisms provide?
Self-deception and distortion of reality
34
What are the psychosexual stages of development?
Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
35
How are the psychosexual stages of development characterized?
By changes in how a child seeks physical pleasure from sexually sensitive parts of the body
36
What happens if there is too much or too little of one stage?
Fixation Ex.) Oral
Too much: smoking, nail biting, alcohol abuse, overeating
Too little: passive, clinging, dependent, pessimistic
37
What is object relations theory?
People do not seek drive satisfaction but seek relationships
38
What are some of the things that object relations explores?
Problems in the child's early attachments that causes psychopathology, how children develop symbolic representations of important others (these representations influence our perceptions and behaviors), children introject into their own personalities, elements of significant persons in their lives, we experience internal conflicts as the attitudes and values of introjected people battle with our own attitudes and values, helps clients separate their own ideas and feelings from those of the introjected objects so their can develop as their own person, helps people establish a clear sense of self; view others more realistically and have more satisfying relationships
39
Who came up with self-psychology?
Heinz Kohus
40
What is self-psychology?
Unempathetic parenting that interferes with the development of healthy sense of self causes psychopathology
41
What are the components of self-psychology?
Emphasizes the child's need to be "mirrored" by caregivers and to idealize them, therapist focuses on improving client's self-esteem, self-cohesion, and a sense of self-continuity, and defenses not only protect against anxiety but also sustain self-esteem
42
What does psychodynamic therapy do?
Helps people gain insights into their unconscious conflicts and to work them through
43
What are the 4 techniques psychodynamic therapy uses?
Free association in which the client says anything that comes to mind, dream analysis that provides the manifest meaning (the surface meaning of the dream) and the latent meaning (true or hidden), interpretation (resistance), or transference in which the person unconsciously transfers onto somebody else feeling and thoughts about an early sig other
44
What are characteristics of behavioral/cognitive-behavioral theory?
Problematic behaviors are not unconscious conflicts, present not past, does not explore feelings, assumes all behavior is learned and, therefore, can be unlearned, and brief
45
What are the 3 types of behavioral theory?
Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning theory
46
What is classical conditioning?
Learn new responses when things are connected or paired
47
Who came up with classical conditioning and what does it involve?
Ivan Pavlov and John Watson; automatic and involuntary responses
48
What is the reflex?
Link between stimulus and response
49
What is the unconditioned reflex?
Link between stimulus and response that is inborn, automatic, and the same for all specie members that involves a survival tactic
50
What is the conditioned reflex?
Link between stimulus and response from experience and learning, varies among specie members
51
What are the therapies for classical conditioning?
Systematic desensitization (imagery and in vivo), flooding, and virtual therapy
52
What is operant conditioning and who came up with it?
Learn behaviors as a result of rewards and punishment; B.F. Skinner (most important psychologist)
53
What is reinforcement?
Event following a response increases an organism's tendency to make that response
54
What is punishment?
Event following a response weakens an organism's tendency to make that response
55
What are therapies of operant conditioning?
Behavior modification and token economies
56
What is behavior modification?
Operant conditioning used to modify behavior
57
What are token economies?
Patients in psychiatric hospitals, prisons, or juvenile facilities get tokens when they behave well and take their medications and can use those tokens to get things
58
What does social learning theory?
Cognitions do matter and personality is largely shaped by learning but cognitions play an important role in what we learn, people are active seekers and interpreters of info about their environment, and learning, especially complex learning, occurs through observation and modeling
59
Who made up social learning theory?
Albert Bandura
60
What are the 4 steps for social learning theory?
Attention, retention, production, motivation
61
What therapy is used for social learning theory?
Modeling
62
What does cognitive-behavioral therapy state?
Cognitions, behavior, and mood all influence one another, how we think about a situation determines our mood and behavior, it consists of automatic thoughts, and we go through cognitive distortions
63
What are some cognitive distortions?
Overgeneralization (student flunks a quiz and thinks they're going to flunk the class), all or nothing reasoning (either you get an A or you fail), and focusing on the negative (gets a 95/100 and focuses on the 5 they missed)
64
What is the one dimensional model of psychopathology?
Explains behavior in terms of a single cause and has a tendency to ignore causal factors from other areas
65
What is the multidimensional integrative model of psychopathology?
A system of different reciprocal influences interact in complex ways to cause and maintain psychological disorders; states that any biological or environmental influence can be part of a system and cannot be considered in isolation
66
What are the major factors of the multidimensional model?
Biological, behavioral, emotional and cognitive, social and cultural, and developmental
67
What are the importance of models of psychopathology?
Conceptual system greatly influences how we conceptualize and treat psychopathology
68
What do genes provide for the multidimensional model?
Boundaries for physical development; where you end up within the boundaries depends on environment
69
What is the reaction range?
Range of 20-25 IQ points that is your genetically determined scale
70
What did Eric Kandle study?
Gene-environment interaction
71
Where do genetics play a bigger role?
With more severe disorders like schizophrenia
72
What is the important question of genes and the environment?
Not how much genes or the environment contribute to psychopathology but how they interact to cause and maintain disorders
73
What are the 2 theories for gene-environment interaction?
Diathesis-stress model and the gene-environment correlation model (reciprocal gene-environmental model)
74
What is the diathesis-stress model?
You cannot develop a disorder unless you have the correct genes to develop the disorder (diathesis) and environmental stress activates diathesis
75
What is the gene-environment correlation model?
People have a genetically determined tendency to create environmental risk factors that trigger genetic vulnerabilities
76
What are neurotransmitters?
Chemical messages or narrow current flowing through the ocean of the brain
77
What are the main neurotransmitters that affect psychological functioning?
Serotonin, GABA, norepinephrine, dopamine, and glutamate
78
What are brain circuits?
Pathways formed from the clustering of neurotransmitters for neurons that are sensitive to that one transmitter
79
What is OCD?
A disorder in which a person feels driven to think disturbing thoughts (obsessions) and/or to perform senseless rituals (compulsions)
80
How is OCD related to brain circuits?
Increased activity in part of the frontal lobe (orbital surface), cingulated gyrus, and caudate nucleus (these areas are rich in brain circuits, especially for serotonin)
81
What are SSRIs and what do they do?
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors; they block reabsorption of serotonin and keeps it in the synapse for longer
82
How are psychosocial influences linked to brain circuits?
Psychological and social factors influence and may even create brain circuits (psychological treatment can change brain circuits)
83
What do psychosocial factors do to change brain behavior?
Change the level of neurotransmitters (going to a movie or party)
84
What influences the structure of neurons and/or the number of receptors?
Learning and experience
85
What is cognitive science?
Studies how we acquire, process, store, and retrieve information
86
What is learned helplessness?
People become anxious and depressed when they BELIEVE that they have no CONTROL over stress
87
What is learned optimism?
People have an optimistic, upbeat attitude despite significant stress and difficulties in their lives
88
What is positive psychology?
What factors produce positive attitudes and happiness
89
What does information processing have to do with psychological disorders?
People process information in different ways and information processing is an important factor in causing psychological disorders
90
What does suppressing emotions do?
Increases sympathetic arousal, which can contribute to psychopathology
91
What influences what we fear most?
Culture and social environment (the number 13 in US and number 4 in Japan)
92
What influence does gender have in psychopathology?
Gender influences phobias and other disorders (women are more susceptible to insect and small animal phobia and eating disorders while men are more susceptible to alcoholism)
93
What is the significance of anxiety disorders?
They are implicated in the full range of psychopathology (anxiety is in other disorders as a symptom)
94
What is the most common type of psychological disorder?
Anxiety disorder
95
What is anxiety?
Negative mood state and somatic symptoms of tension due to apprehension about the future
96
What purpose does anxiety serve?
It can be adaptive - helps us prepare and plan for future threats and moderate amounts enhance physical and intellectual performance
97
What is the Yerkes-Dodson curve?
Shows that moderate levels of anxiety are better than none at all and too much because it gives increasing alertness and helps us perform better
98
What is fear?
Immediate negative emotional reaction to current danger that is characterized by strong escapist action tendencies often with a surge in SNS
99
How is fear purposeful?
Triggers rapid changes in SNS that prepares the body to fight or run away (adrenaline)
100
What are characteristics of anxiety disorders?
Pervasive and persistent symptoms of anxiety and fear are unrealistic or out of proportion, involve excessive avoidance and escape, cause clinically significant distress and impairment in functioning, and result in panic attacks
101
What are panic attacks?
Abrupt experience of intense fear or discomfort accompanied by physical symptoms
102
What is the function of panic attacks?
Inappropriate activation of the fear or flight response
103
What are interoceptive cues?
Internal cues
104
What are agoraphobic cues?
External cues
105
What are the subtypes of panic attacks?
Expected (specific phobias or social phobias) and unexpected (panic disorder)
106
What are the biological factors for anxiety disorders?
Genetics (tendency to be uptight or to have panic attacks) and anxiety associated with specific brain circuits and neurotransmitters (CRF and HPA axis have wide-range effects on areas of brain implicated in anxiety and GABA, noradrenaline, and serotonin involved in anxiety)
107
What role does the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) play in anxiety disorders?
Brain circuit in limbic system in animals is heavily involved in anxiety and the septal-hippocampal system is activated by the cerebral cortex or brain stem when they sense potential danger so they freeze, experience anxiety, and apprehensively evaluate the situation
108
What does the fight/flight system have to do with anxiety disorders?
Originates in the brain stem and travels through the midbrain structures to produce and immediate alarm-and-escape response that looks like panic
109
What are the psychological causes of anxiety disorder?
Classical drive theory (Kohut-threats to self-esteem) or product of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and modeling (anxiety and fear learned responses)
110
What does the learned response view of causes of anxiety disorders state?
A strong fear response initially occurs during extreme stress or dangerous situations and so fear responses become associated with a variety of internal and external cues
111
What are early childhood contributions to anxiety disorders?
Lead to a sense they can or cannot control environment
112
How do children develop a sense or no sense of control?
Responsive parents who permit exploration from "secure home base" promote control and non-responsive or overly protective and intrusive parents promote a sense of no control
113
What are social contributions to anxiety disorder?
Stressful life events trigger vulnerabilities to anxiety and panic (interpersonal like marriage or divorce, physical like injury or illness, and social like excelling in school)
114
What is the triple vulnerability model?
Biological vulnerability, generalized psychological vulnerability (low self-esteem), and specific psychological vulnerability (certain situations help them learn from early experience)
115
What is comorbidity?
When a person has 2+ psychological disorders
116
What psychological disorders tend to be comorbid with anxiety disorders?
Other anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, and substance abuse disorder
117
What is the classification of PA?
One or more of the following symptoms following at least 2 PA: A month or more of worry about: another attack, implications or consequences of an attack, or significant change in behavior
118
What is agoraphobia?
Fear or avoidance of situations or events (person believes escape may be difficult or they will not receive help if they have panic-like, incapacitating, or embarrassing symptoms)
119
What are common methods of coping with PA?
Drugs and alcohol and interceptive avoidance
120
What is interceptive avoidance?
Avoid situations or activities that produce internal physical sensations of PA
121
What are causes of panic disorder?
Generalized biological vulnerability (More likely than others to have activated their FFS in response to stress), generalized psychological (world is dangerous and may not be able to cope) and specific psychological vulnerability (interpret normal bodily sensations from PA in catastrophic ways)
122
What can cause a repeat of a panic attack?
Internal and external cues present during PA become quickly associated with the PA
123
What are medications for panic disorder?
Benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, and (preferred) SSRIs (affect levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and GABA)
124
What are psychological treatments of panic disorder?
Cognitive-behavior therapies are highly effective (agoraphobic avoidance treated by exposing client to feared situation by systemic desensitization and altering cognitions), panic control treatment (PCT) where they create mini PA by exposing clients to clusters of interceptive sensations and alters client's cognitions
125
What are combined treatments?
Meds and CBT (no evidence that combined treatment produces a better outcome - usually start with CBT)
