Exam 2 Flashcards
A Dissociative Disorder Is
- Characterized by dissociatio/ splitting off of a person’s memory or personality from consciousness
- Declines with age
- High rates in prostitutes, exotic dancers, and male sex offenders
Assessment of Dissociative Amnesia
- Inability to recall important PERSONAL information (too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness
- Not due to head injury, drugs, sleepwalking, malingering
- Claimed in 30-40% of homicide cases
- High hypnotizability
Features of Dissociative Amnesia
- Uncommon (often in adolescent and young females, and in young men during wartime)
- Sudden onset
- Memory recovery occurs within 24hrs (40%) to 5 days (75%)
- Amnesia usually limited to certain time period surrounding psychological, traumatic event (Amnesia for all events is or everything since traumatic event is rare)
- Loss of memory for personal material rather than skill memories
- During amnestic episode there is disorientation and perplexity
- Recovery is complete recurrences are rare
Etiology of Dissociative Amnesia
- Follows severe psychosocial stress involving threat of injury or death
- Psychosocially distressing knowledge is repressed
Treatment Dissociative Amnesia
Hypnosis may be useful if person wants memory recovered
Why might a memory not return during dissociative amnesia treatment?
A memory is too distressing
Dissociative Fugue Assessment
- Sudden unexpected travel away from home, unable to recall personal information
- Assumption of new identity (partial or complete)
- Not due to neurological factors (sleepwalking, malingering)
- DSM-V recategorized as subtype of dissociative amnesia
Features Dissociative Fugue
- Very rare
- Any age
- Cross-cultural variations
- Lasts only hours or days, travel is limited, personality change incomplete, occasionally lasts years
- Continuumwith dissociative amnesia and DID
- Recovery complete, recurrences rare
How rare is dissociative fugue
<0.2%
What are the cross-cultural variations of Dissociative Fugue?
- Pibloktoq (Inuit)
- Grisi Siknis (Miskito of Honduras)
- Amok (Western Pacific)
- Demonic Possession
Etiology Dissociative Fugue
- Severe psychological stress preceded by depression or anxiety
- Often during wartime or natural disasters
Treatment Dissociative Fugue
- If spontaneous recovery does not occur, try removing repression by hypnosis
Jeffrey Ingram
- Mystery man
- Severe case of amnesia (dissociative fugue)
Edward Lighthart
- Mystery man 2.0
- No idea who he is
- Possibly induced by trauma
Dissociative Identity Disorder Assessment
- 2+ complex integrated personalities
- Dominant at different times
- 20% obvious symptoms over period of time
- 20% rarely show signs
- 60% have long periods of quiescence and then symtpomalogy
Features DID
- Confused with schizophrenia
- Very rare
- More common in late adolescence and young adult females
- Males average 8 identities, females 15; mode is 3
- Different types of personalities to handle different situations
- 70% meet criteria for BPD; high rates of mood, anxiety, somatoform, susbtance, sexual, eating, and sleep disorders
- Dominant personality has no awareness of others (other personalities have varying degrees of awareness)
- Unique memories
- Many suffer from headaches
- Most personalities tend to be younger
- Same scores IQ test but different on personality tests
- Personality transition sudden
- More chronic than other dissociative disorders (rarely resolves itself)
- Culture bound (Restricted to Canada and U.S.)
- DID is real but problems with underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis
Why might DID be cultural bound
- Spirit posession
- Speaking in tongues
- Amok
DID is real, but problems with underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis
- Rarely asessed outside North America
- Small number of clinicians made most of the assessments
- Traditionally most common way of assessing and eliciting a personality was through hypnosis
What might inadvertently create personalities in DID?
Hypnosis
Etiology DID
- More common in first degree relatives
- 90+% report history of child abuse; 75% report physical and sexual abuse
- Highly hypnotizable, person dissociates themselves to deal with emotionally difficult situations
Hypnotizability is…
Heritable
Treatment DID
Intensive integrative therapy
- Map personality system, determine origin, function, knowledge of each personality
- Establish internal communication among personalities and agreeing to work together
- Develop therapeutic alliance with each personality and work on specific trauma
- Therapy takes 1-2 years and only 25% achieve full integration
What are Psychosomatic Disorders?
- Physical symptoms with singificant psycholgical distress and impairment
- Excessive distress over real physical problems, others no physical problem
- 30-50% of patients seen by physicians
- ‘Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders’ in DSM-5
- ‘Somatoform Disorders’ in DSM-IV
DSM-IV (Psychosomatic)
Somatoform Disorders
DSM-5 (Psychosomatic)
Somatic Symptoms and Related Disorders
Somatic Symptom Disorder Assessment
- 1+ bodily symptoms causing persistent less than 6 months and excessive distress
- Excessive thoughts, feelings, and/ or behaviours related to these symptoms
(Uncomplicated heart attack - Unecessary impairment, and excessive experience of pain associated with ailment)
Somatic Symptom Disorder Features
- Typically have multiple physical complaints (Pain can be the only symptom)
- Appraise symptom as more severe despite medical reassurance
- Common symtpoms in children are abdominal pain, headache, fatigue, and nausea
- Can occur with physical problems
- Excessive medical consultation and intervention (medication, surgery) usually ineffective
- Resistant to psychological referral
- Chronic but fluctuating
- High comorbidity with depression and anxiety
- 5-7% prevalence
- More common in females, older age, lower socieconomic, less education
Somatic Symtpom Disorder Etiology
- Significant genetic contribution (runs in families)
- Stress
- Lack of insight
- Secondary reward (attention received)
- Concurrent physical illness that sensitizes them to potential problems
Somatic Symptom Disorder Treatment
- Difficult to effectively treat
- CBT for psychological problems
- Antianxiety medication and antidepressants
- Exercise
- Relaxation training
Why is Somatic Symptom Disorder Difficult to Treat?
Unaware of their mental health because individuals are too focused on their physical well-being
Why is CBT useful in Somatic Symptom Disorder?
To challenge irrational thoughts
Illness Anxiety Disorder Assessment
- Preoccupation with having or getting serious illness
- Physical symptoms usually not present or very mild
- Fear persists despite medical reassurance
- More commonly known as hypochondria
Illness Anxiety Disorder Features
- Common (1-10% of adult population)
- Equal sex ratio
- Most common between ages 20-50
- Excessive medical consultation and intervention that is usually ineffectvie
- Doctor shopping, frustration with medical system common
- Often chronic
- High comorbidity with anxiety disorders (especially panic disorder) and depression
Illness Anxiety Disorder Etiology
- History of adverse early experiences
- Recent psychological stress
- Past experience with real physical disease
Illness Anxiety Disorder Treatment
- Difficult to treat, approach the same as somatic symtpom disorder
- CBT useful
- Antiaxiety medication and antidepressants
- Exercise
- Relaxation training
What are some examples of illness anxiety?
- Covid-19
- Opioid Crisis
- Mass Shootings
- Terror Attacks
- Zika
- Ebola
- End of the World (Maya Calendar)
- H1N1
- Global Warming
- West Nile Virus
- Avian Flu
- Monster Hurricanes
- Mad Cow Disease
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Anthrax Attacks
- Y2K
- Meteor Impact
How many babies are born in the world each week?
2.7 million
How many people die every year in the U.S.
3,000,000
How many people die in Canada every year?
300,000
Annual Deaths
- Smoking
- Obesity
- Accidents
- Alcohol
- Flu and Pneumonia
Conversion Disorder Assessment
- Motor or sensory ailment cause by psychological factors
- Not under voluntary control
Conversion Disorder Features
- Abnormal movements/ tremors; sensory loss (blindness, deafness); pseudoseizures; speech impediment or loss of speech; paralysis
- No evidence of any physical problems - Symptoms do not conform to known neurological pathways
- Indifference to symptoms in some cases
- Transient symptoms common, persistent conversion disorder rare
- Onset any time, common in children
- 2-3 times more common in females, low socioeconomic groups, and cultures where expression of emotional distress inhibited
- Comorbid with dissociative disorders, anxiety, major depression, and personality disorders
- Cross-cultural but different symptoms: bruning hands/ feet or feeling of worms in head or ants under skin symptoms more common in Africa and S. Asia
Conversion Disorder Etiology
- A stressful life event usually the intial causing factor
- Having an actual physical disordr with similar features is a risk factor
- Lack of insight, repression, and secondary reward (disability sometimes prevents person from something they do not want to do. they are not able to admit this to themselves. Repression keeps the conflict out of awareness. Symtpoms maintained by rewarding consequences of avoidance and/ or attention/ sympathy received)
Conversion Disorder Treatment
- Remove original stressor that the person may be unconsciously avoiding
- Eliminate secondary reward
- Reduce stress
- Hypnosis to remove symptom
What is Mass Conversion Disorder?
- When a group of people develop the same set of psychosomatic
- Much rarer
What is the Historical Perspective on Psychosomatic Disorders?
- Psychosomatic symtpoms have changed over time reflecting societal beliefs/ concerns
- Pseudoseizures and paralysis common conversion symptoms historically, but much less common today
- In 1890s, coincident with interest in hypnosis, many people reported being in permanent hypnotic state
- Neurasthenia ‘nervous exhaustion’ became popular in late 1890s and continued for several decades (one of the most common diagnoses in early 1900s, but disappeared by WWI
What are some modern conditions that may have replaced these historical conditions?
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Chronic fatigue
- Fibromyalgia
- Sick of building syndrome
- Chemical sensitivity
What is the evidence that modern conditions are psychosomatic?
- Demographic profile same as conversion disorder and somatic symtpom disorder (female, single, prior history of depression)
- These conditions have high comorbidity with depression and anxiety
- No reliable biochemical markers
- CBT is best known treatment
What is the evidence that modern conditions are physical?
- Some blood flow studies have shown reductions in certain areas, especially hind brain
- Evidence of subtle neuropsychological impairment (complex info processing speed)
- Some subtle immunologic abnormalities
- CBT does not cure
- Unlike depression stringently diagnosed chronic fatigue sufferers do not return to premorbid functioning at follow-up
What is the number of chronic fatigue sufferers that don’t returnto premorbid functioning at follow-up?
<10%
True or false: Truth likely somewhere in the middle, and dependent on the individual case
True
Assessment Phobias
Unreasonable fear of a specific object or situation
Phobias Features
- Common (7-9% prevalence)
- Twice as common in females and highest in teenagers
- Lower in Asia, Africa, South America; lower in older people
- People with phobias typically have more than one
- Most common phobias are snakes and spiders; public speaking; heights; mice; flying; insects; illness/ injury/ blood; closed spaces
- Usually evident in childhood
Percentage of snakes and spiders phobia
41%