Exam 2.3 Flashcards
What does “soma” mean?
“body”
What are the 4 disorders in the DSM-V in the category of Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders?
- Somatic Symptom Disorder
- Illness Anxiety Disorder
- Conversion Disorder
- Factitious Disorder
What previous conditions are combined in the DSM-V for Somatic Symptom Disorder?
- Hypochondriasis
- Somatization Disorder
- Pain Disorder
What are some symptoms of Somatic Symptom Disorder?
- 1+ somatic symptoms that cause distress and disrupt functioning
- Symptoms lasting 6+ months
- Excessive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors related to the somatic symptoms and health concerns
- Concerns about seriousness of symptoms
- High levels of anxiety about symptoms
- Excessive time and energy spent focused on symptoms and health concerns
- A symptom may not always be present, but the state of being symptomatic is persistent
- Symptoms are not caused by another condition
What are some causal factors of Somatic Symptom Disorder, according to the Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective?
- Distorted perceptions of bodily sensations and their meanings
- Top-down processes, in which bodily sensations are associated with symptoms of illness
What are some causal factors of Somatic Symptom Disorder, according to the Psychoanalytic Perspective?
- Physical symptoms are the result of internal, unconscious conflicts
- Psychic energy translates internal, unconscious conflicts into physical symptoms
What is a common treatment for Somatic Symptom Disorder?
CBT
What are the key differences between Illness Anxiety Disorder and Somatic Symptom Disorder?
- Somatic Symptom Disorder requires physical symptoms
- Illness Anxiety Disorder only requires a persistent, excessive worry about having an illness
What are some clinical features of Conversion Disorder?
- Neurological symptoms affecting motor skills, such as paralysis, blindness, deafness, etc.
- Symptoms are not caused by another legitimate condition
- Disruptions in sensory and motor functioning, can include seizures
What are potential causes of Conversion Disorder, according to the Psychoanalytic Perspective?
- Internal sexual conflicts or other psychological issues convert into physical symptoms
- Extreme stress
What are common treatments for Conversion Disorder?
- Hypnotic suggestion
- CBT
- Other behavioral therapies
What are some clinical features of Factitious Disorder?
- Intentional fabrication of psychological and/or physical symptoms
- Fabrication is not motivated by external rewards
What is malingering?
- Not a disorder
- Intentional fabrication or exaggeration of symptoms, motivated by external incentives such as avoiding work/school/legal responsibilities
What are the 3 dissociative disorders in the DSM-V?
- Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
- Dissociative Amnesia
- Dissociative Identity Disorder
What are dissociative disorders?
Processes that typically regulate awareness and mental abilities become disorganized and disrupted, causing impairment in functioning and perceptions of consciousness/personal identity
What is dissociation?
- Disruption and inconsistency in psychological functions
- Memory
- Identity
- Consciousness
- Perception
- Motor control
What are the clinical features of Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder?
- Derealization: Sense of reality of the external world is temporarily absent
- Depersonalization: Sense of one’s self and personal reality is temporarily absent
- Detachment from the self physically and mentally
- Feeling like an outside observer
- Can still react with the environment (reality testing)
- Not explained by drugs or other conditions
What are some clinical features of Dissociative Amnesia?
- Can be a defense mechanism
- Inability to recall autobiographical information
- Memory loss
- Causes distress and impairs functioning
- Cannot be attributed to or explained by normal forgetting, other conditions, or intoxication
What is Retrograde Amnesia?
Partial or total inability to recall previously retained information/experiences
What is Anterograde Amnesia?
Partial or total inability to retain new information
What are some clinical features of a Dissociative Fugue?
- Amnesic of the past and the identity of self/others
- Deficits in episodic and autobiographical memory
- Unaware of memory loss but can remember events that happen during the fugue
- Able to behave “normally” but often lives a different lifestyle than before
- Confusion when coming out of the fugue
- Implicit memory is intact
What are some clinical features of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?
- Disruption of identity, in which there are 2+ distinct personality states (host and alters)
- Recurrent episodes of amnesia
- Involuntary trances, particularly when changing alters
- Symptoms cause distress and impair functioning
- Highly comorbid with PTSD
- DSM-V now categorizes PTSD with DID symptoms as its own subtype
Why is DID a controversial condition?
There is ongoing debate about how legitimate the condition is, especially because it is thought that some people fake the condition
How do cultural factors influence the prevalence, treatments, and outcomes in dissociative disorders?
- Variances in how accepted and legitimate behaviors are perceived and treated in a culture
- Some cultures view dissociative behaviors in certain contexts as normal (spiritual rituals)
What is Pathological Possession?
- Involuntary and distressing dissociative experiences in certain cultures that are often explained as being the result of external possession from entities like demons
- DSM-V now has 2 classifications for these forms of DID: Possession, Non-Possession
What is “amok” and how is it treated?
- A rage disorder prevalent in some cultures
- Treated with hypnosis and/or prolonged treatment
Which of the somatic disorders differs the most from the others?
Factitious Disorder
- Symptoms are intentionally fabricated. This is different from the other disorders because the others involve genuine concern for the experiencer’s health
What is the difference between functional and organic problems?
Organic: Condition can be detected and measured by physical or biochemical processes
Functional: Causal factors of a condition and its symptoms cannot be explained by any known processes
What differentiates organic amnesia from psychogenic amnesia?
Psychogenic (Retrograde): Loss of autobiographical memory, semantic knowledge, and procedural skills
Organic (Anterograde): Cannot recall new information
In what ways do the dissociative disorders exist on a continuum?
Experiences of someone with a dissociative disorder can range from slight disruptions in mental abilities/consciousness to full-on disconnection from reality and/or the self
