Exam 4- Chapter 13 Discovering psychology Flashcards
- There’s the belief that “crazy” behavior is very different from “normal” behavior.
- Depends on social or cultural context
- When we encounter people whose behavior strikes us as weird, unpredictable or baffling, it is easy to simply dismiss them as “crazy.”
- There is still a social stigma attached to suffering from a psychological disorder.
Common misconceptions about psychological disorders
The pattern of behavioral or psychological symptoms must represent a serious departure from the prevailing social and cultural norms.
- Determined by the DSM-5
Important qualifying factor for a psychological disorder
- Inclusions for some conditions that are “too normal” to be considered disorders, such as extreme sadness related to bereavement.
- Use of arbitrary cutoffs to draw the line between different diagnosis.
- Gender bias
- Possible bias resulting from the financial ties of many DSM-5 authors to pharmaceutical industry, which might benefit from the expansion of mental illness categories or loosening of criteria for diagnoses.
- Blurs the distinction between everyday normal unhappiness and “mental illness.”
Criticisms for the DSM-5
People diagnosed with one disorder are also frequently diagnosed with another disorder as well.
Comorbidity
True or false:
1/3 to 1/5 of the adult population in the United states will experience symptoms of a mental disorder.
True
- Lack of insurance
- Low income
- Lack of access to medical care
- Lack of awareness
- Fear of being stigmatized
Reasons why people may not receive help for mental disorders.
- Anxiety, Posttraumatic stress and Obsessive-compulsive disorders
- Depressive and bipolar disorders
- Eating disorders
- Personality disorders
- Dissociative disorders
- Schizophrenia
6 DSM-5 categories
- Neurodevelopmental disorders
- Substance-related and addictive disorders
- Somatic symptoms and related disorders
- Disruptive, impulse-control and conduct disorders.
Additional categories in the DSM-5
Includes a wide range of developmental, behavioral, learning, and communication disorders that are usually first diagnosed in infancy, childhood, or adolescence. Symptoms of a particular disorder may vary depending on a child’s age and developmental level.
Neurodevelopmental disorders
Characterized by a cluster of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptoms indicating that the individual continues using the substance or behavior despite significant problems related to the substance or behavior.
Substance-related and addictive disorders
Characterized by persistent, recurring complaints of bodily (or somatic) symptoms that are accompanied by abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in response to these symptoms.
Somatic symptom and related disorders
Varied group of disorders involving problems in the self-control of emotions and behaviors and that are manifested in behaviors that harm or violate the rights of others.
Disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders
- Personal internal alarm system that tells you when something is not right.
- When it alarms you to a realistic threat, anxiety is adaptive and normal.
Anxiety is sometimes helpful
Has both physical and mental effects.
- Physical alert
- Mental alert
- Found in virtually every culture, but symptoms vary
- Found more often in women than men
- Can develop early in life
Anxiety
Prepares you to defensively take flight or fight potential dangers.
Physical alert
Makes you focus your attention squarely on the threatening situation.
- become extremely vigilant
- Scan the environment for potential threats
Mental alert
- Irrational
- The anxiety is provoked by perceived threats that are exaggerated or nonexistent, and the anxiety response is out of proportion to the actual importance of the situation. - Uncontrollable
- The person cannot shit down the alarm reaction, even when they know it is unrealistic. - Disruptive
- It interferes with relationships, job or academic performance, or everyday activities.
Pathological anxiety
- PTSD
- OCD
Disorders that include anxiety
- Constantly tense and anxious
- Anxiety is pervasive
- Anxiety about life circumstances, sometimes with little or no justification.
- When one source of anxiety is removed, another source quickly moves in to take its place.
- The anxiety can be attached to virtually any object or none at all.
- Sometimes referred to as floating-anxiety-disorder.
Generalized anxiety disorder
- Environmental
- Psychological
- Genetic
- Biological
Factors of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
- Pounding heart
- Rapid breathing
- Breathlessness
- Chocking sensation
- Feelings of terror
- Feeling as though they may die, go crazy, or completely lose control.
*peaks within 10 minutes and gradually subsides, not unusual for people to go to the hospital.
Symptoms of a panic attack
- Stressful experience
- Stressful period of life
- Experiences of bereavement
Triggers for panic attacks
- Falling
- Getting lost
- Becoming incontinent in a public place where help may not be available and escape may be impossible.
- Crowds
- Stores
- Elevators
- Public transportation
- Traveling in a car
*many people suffering from this may never leave home
Things people with agoraphobia fear/may avoid
- Oversensitivity to physical arousal
- Biological predisposition towards anxiety
- Low sense of control over potentially life-threatening events
Make a person vulnerable to panic
People with panic disorder are not only oversensitive to physical sensations, but they also tend to catastophize the meaning of their experience.
Catastrophic cognitions theory
A Spanish phrase that translates to “attack on nerves.”
- Similar to a panic attack
- Heart palpitations
- Dizziness
- Fear of dying
- Fear of going crazy or losing control
- Also becomes hysterical (not similar to panic attacks)
- Scream, swear, strike at others and break things.
- Typically follows a severe stressor, especially one involving a family member.
- Funerals
- Accidents
- Family conflicts
- Tends to elicit immediate social support - seems to be a culturally shaped, acceptable way to respond to severe stress.
Ataque de nervios
Don’t specifically interfere with a person’s ability to function are very common.
- Most people cope with such fears without being overwhelmed with anxiety.
- They would not be diagnosed with a psychological disorder.
Mild irrational fears
- Amathophobia - fear of dust
- Anemophobia - Fear of wind
- Aphephobia - Fear of being touched by another person.
- Bibliphobia- Fear of books
- Catotrophobia- Fear of breaking a mirror
- Ergophobia- Fear of work or responsibility
- Erythophobia- Fear of red objects
- Gamophobia- Fear of marriage
- Hypertrichophobia- Fear of growing excessive amounts of body hair.
- Levophobia- Fear of things being on the left side of your body.
- Phobophobia- Fear of acquiring a phobia
- Phonophobia- Fear of the sound of your own voice
- Triskaidekaphobia- Fear of the number 13
Some unusual phobias
Have an incapacitating terror and anxiety that interferes with the person’s ability to function in daily life.
- can provoke a full fledged panic attack
- Realize that their fears are irrational or excessive, but still go to great lengths to avoid their fear.
Specific phobia
1- Fear of particular situations, such as flying, driving, tunnels, bridges, elevators, or enclosed places.
2- Fear of features of the natural environment, such as heights, water, thunder storms, or lightning
3- Fear of injury or blood, including fear of injections, needles, and medical or dental procedures.
4- Fear of animals and insects, such as snakes, spiders, dogs, cats, slugs or bats.
4 categories that specific phobias tend to fall under
One of the most common psychological disorders
- More prevalent in women than in men
- Irrational fear of being criticized by other people.
- Must interfere with daily life.
- Some, but not all recognize that their fear is irrational or excessive
May fear:
- Eating a meal in public
- Making small talk at a party
- Using a public restrooms
Social anxiety disorder
- Usually affects young Japanese males.
- Several features in common with social anxiety disorder
- Extreme social anxiety
- Avoidance of social situations
- Not worried about being embarrassed in public
- Fears appearance or smell, facial expression, or body language will offend, insult, or embarrass other people.
Taijin Kyofusho
- Classical conditioning
- Conditioned response
- Conditioned stimulus
- Operant conditioning
- Observational learning
- Biologically prepared
Things that can explain the development of phobias
Developing a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus that has generalized to similar stimuli.
Classical conditioning
An operant response that is reinforced negatively or positively by behaviors.
Operant conditioning
Some people learn to be phobic of certain objects or situations by observing the fearful reactions of someone else who acts as a model in the situation.
Observational learning
Humans seem to be this to acquire fears of certain animals and situations, such as snakes or heights, which were survival fears in human evolutionary history.
- People also seem predisposed to develop phobias of creatures that arouse disgust (slugs, maggots, or cockroaches). People may find them repulsive because they are associated with disease, infection or filth.
Biologically prepared
- Not classified as an anxiety disorder, but has some of the same patterns of emotion, cognition, and behavior.
- Survivors of war or combat, extreme traumas such as natural disasters, relief work, sexual assault, or terrorist attacks.
- Rescue workers, relief workers, emergency service personnel.
- Twice as many women than men.
- No stressor, no matter how extreme, produces this disorder in everyone.
- Unusual n that the source is the traumatic event itself, rather than the cause that lies within the individual.
PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder)
- The person frequently recalls the event, replaying it in his mind. Often the recollections are intrusive. Can be triggered by unrelated events.
- The person avoids stimuli or situations that tend to trigger memories of the experience.
- He may experience negative alterations in thinking, moods, and emotions.
- May feel alienated from others
- Blame himself or others for the traumatic event.
- Persistent since of guilt, fear, or anger.
- Some able to recall key features of the event. - The person experiences increased physical arousal.
- Easily startled
- Experience sleep disturbances
- Have problems concentrating and remembering.
- Prone to irritability or angry outbursts.
4 core cluster symptoms that characterize PTSD
Unwanted and interfere with normal thoughts.
Intrusive
- Evidence that a vulnerability to PTSD can be inherited.
- People with a personal or family history of psychological disorders are more likely to develop PTSD when exposed to extreme trauma.
- The magnitude of the trauma plays an important role.
- More traumatic = more likely to develop PTSD - Frequency of exposure.
- When people undergo multiple traumas = higher incidences of PTSD
Factors that influence the likelihood of developing PTSD
- Some people trivialize this term, which is actually annoying to people diagnosed with this.
- Not classified as an anxiety disorder, but shares similar patterns and behaviors.
- A person’s life is dominated by repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions).
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Not the same as everyday worries.
- Little or no basis in reality and are often extremely far-fetched.
- Common examples: irrational fear of dirt and germs, and other forms of contamination, pathological doubt about having accomplished a simple task.
Obsessions
Typically have some sort of factual basis, even if they’re somewhat exaggerated.
Normal worries
- Typically are ritual behaviors that must be carried out in a certain pattern or sequence.
- May be overt physical behaviors or covert mental behaviors.
- If the person tries to resist these rituals, unbearable tension, anxiety, and distress result.
Compulsions
- Repeatedly washing hands
- Checking doors or windows
- Entering and reentering a doorway until you walk through exactly in the middle.
Overt physical behaviors
- Counting or reciting certain phrases to yourself.
Covert mental behavior
- Obsessions and compulsions tend to call into a limited number of categories.
- Many people with obsessive-compulsive disorder have the irrational belief that failure to perform the ritual action will lead to catastrophic or disastrous outcome.
- Particularly prone to superstitious or “magical” thinking.
- People may experience either obsessions or compulsions, but more commonly both are present and are often related to each other.
- Other compulsions bear little logical relationship to the feared consequences.
- Take similar shape in different cultures around the world, but the content differs.
More facts about OCD
- Biological factors- deficiencies in the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin, excess of glutamate.
- Linked with broad deficits in the ability to manage cognitive processes such as attention- linked to dysfunction in specific brain areas.
- Areas involved in fight-or-flight response, frontal lobes (play a key role in our ability to think and plan ahead).
- Caudate nucleus- Involved in regulating movements
Possible factors causing OCD
- Contamination
- Pathological doubt
- Violent or sexual thoughts
Common obsessions
- Washing
- Checking
- Counting
- Symmetry and precision
Common compulsions
Emotions violate the criteria of normal moods in quality, intensity, and duration, a person’s emotional state does not reflect what is going on in his or her life.
Depressive and bipolar disorders
The word “affect” os synonymous with “emotion” or “feelings.”
Mood disorders of affective disorders (depressive and bipolar disorders)