First Half Flashcards
Psychopathology
The field concerned with the nature and development of mental disorders.
Abnormal Behaviour
Patterns of emotion, thought, and action deemed pathological for one or more of the following reasons: infrequent occurrence, violation of norms, personal distress, disability or dysfunction, and unexpectedness.
Normal Curve
As applied in psychology, the bell-shaped distribution of a measurable trait depicting most people in the middle and few at the extremes.
Clinicians
A health professional authorized to provide services to people suffering from one or more pathologies.
Clinical Psychologist
An individual who has earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology or Psy.D. and whose training has included an internship in a mental hospital or clinic
Assessment
Finding out what is wrong with a person, what may have caused a problem or problems, and what steps may be taken to improve the person’s condition
Diagnosis
The determination that a patient’s set of symptoms or problems indicates a particular disorder
Psychotherapy
A primarily verbal means of helping troubles individuals change their thoughts, feelings, and behaviour to reduce distress and to reduce distress and to achieve greater life satisfaction
Psychiatrist
A physician (MD) who has taken specialized post-doctoral training, called a residency, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders
Psychoactive Drugs
Chemical compounds having a psychological effect that alters mood or thought process. Valium is an example
Psychoanalyst
A therapist who has taken specialized post-doctoral training in psychoanalysis after earning an MD or Ph.D. degree
Social Worker
A mental health professional who holds a master of social work (M.S.W.) degree
Counselling Psychologist
A doctoral-level mental health professional whose training is similar to that of a clinical psychologist, though usually with less emphasis on research and severe psychopathology
Prescriptive Authority
The right to prescribe drugs. The current controversy is the extent to which psychologists should have the right to prescribe drugs even though this is usually restricted to medical doctors and, in some cases, nurse practitioners
Demonology
The doctrine that a person’s abnormal behaviour is caused by an autonomous evil spirit
Exorcism
The casting out of evil spirits by ritualistic chanting or torture
Trepanning
The act of making a surgical opening in a living skull. This act was sometimes performed because of the belief that it would allow evil spirits to leave the body
Somatogenesis
Development from bodily origins, as distinguished from psychology origins
Psychogenesis
Development from psychological origins, as distinguished from somatic origins
Asylums
Refuges established in western Europe in the fifteenth century to confine and provide for the mentally ill; the forerunners of the mental hospital.
Badlam
A scene or place involving a wild uproar or confusion. The term is derived from the scenes at Bethlehem Hospital in London, where unrestrained groups of mentally ill people interacted with each other
Moral Treatment
A therapeutic regimen, introduced by Pinel during the French Revolution, whereby mental patients were released from their restraints and were treated with compassion and dignity rather than with contempt and denigration
Transinstitutionalization
The tendency to reduce the number of people in psychiatric hospitals by transferring them to other institutions. Most typically, this results in increasing the number of people with mental health problems in general hospitals
Provincial Psychiatric Hospitals
A facility where chronic patients are treated. Such hospitals provide protection, but treatment is often custodial and may involve little psychosocial treatment
Community Treatment Order (CTO)
A legal tool that specifies the terms of treatment that must be adhered to in order for a mentally ill person to be released and live in the community. Recent court decisions emphasize the intent of protecting the mentally ill person
Syndrome
A group or pattern of symptoms that tend to occur together in a particular disease
General Paresis
Mental illness characterized by paralysis and “insanity” that typically lead to death within five years, Now known to be cause by syphilis of the brain
Germ Theory of Disease
The general view in medicine that disease is caused by infection of the body by minute organisms and viruses
Cathartic Method
A therapeutic procedure introduced by Breuer and developed further by Freud in the late nineteenth century whereby a patient recalls and relives an earlier emotional catastrophe and re-experiences the tension and unhappiness, the goal being to relieve emotional suffering.
Schizophrenia
A group of psychotic disorders characterized by major disturbances in thought, emotion, and behaviour; disordered thinking in which ideas are not logically related; faulty perception and attention; bizarre disturbances in motor activity; flat or inappropriate emotions; and reduced tolerance for stress in interpersonal relations. The patient withdraws from people and reality, often into a fantasy life of delusions and hallucinations
Stereotyping
A fixed belief that typically involves a negative generalization about a group or class of people. Members of the general public often endorse a number of negative beliefs about mentally ill people, and thus engage in stereotyping
Stigmatization
A reduction in the status of a group of people, such as mentally ill people, due to perceived deficiencies
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
A rare dissociative disorder in which two or more fairly distinct and separate personalities are present within the same individual, each with his or her own memories, relationships and behaviour patterns, with only one of them dominant at any given time. Formerly called “multiple personality disorder”
Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA)
A national organization that provides information about mental illness and acts as an advocate for mentally ill people
Self-Stigma
The tendency for distressed people to internalize negative views of the self for not being well-adjusted. In essence, people high in self-stigma are seeing themselves according to negative stereotypes
Mental Health Literacy
The knowledge that a person develops about mental illness, including its causes and treatments
Medicare
The system of health care in Canada
Accountability
A requirement that Canada’s health care system and provinces be held responsible for the quality of the care provided as part of a new Health Care Act, as recommended in the Romanow report.
Evidence-Based Treatment
Treatments and interventions that have been shown to be effective according to controlled experimental research
Deinstitutionalization
The increasing tendency for treatment to take place in the community, perhaps on an outpatient basis, rather than having patients reside in a public institution, such as a provincial mental hospital.
Community Psychology
An approach to therapy that emphasizes prevention and the seeking out of potential difficulties rather than waiting for troubled individuals to initiate consultation. The location for professional activities tends to be in the person’s natural surroundings rather than in therapist’s office.
Prevention
Primary prevention comprises efforts in community psychology to reduce the incidence of new cases of psychological disorder by such means as altering stressful living conditions and genetic counselling; secondary prevention includes efforts to detect disorders early, so that they will not develop into full-blown, perhaps chronic, disabilities; and tertiary prevention attempts to reduce the long-term consequences of having a disorder, equivalent in most respects to therapy
Repression
A defense mechanism whereby impulses and thoughts unacceptable to the ego are pushed into the unconscious
Resilience
An individual’s level of protection from risk factors or ability to recover from emotional difficulties or trauma
Resilient Type
The most adaptive if three personality types found among children. Resilient children tend to become resilient adults who are able to bounce back from adversity
Resistances
During psychoanalysis,the defensive tendency of the unconscious part of the ego to ward off from consciousness particularly threatening repressed material
Reuptake
Process by which released neurotransmitters are pumped back into the presynaptic cell, making them available for enhancing transmitting of nerve impulses
Risk
A factor that increases the likelihood of a person developing a disorder or dysfunction. Risk factors can react to a characteristic of the person or their life situation
Role-playing
A technique that teaches people to behave in a certain way by encouraging them to pretend that they are in a particular situation; it helps people acquire complex behaviors in an efficient way
Schema
A mental structure for organizing information about the world
Secondary process thinking
The reality-based decision-making and problem-solving activities of the ego
Self-actualization
The fulfillment of one’s potential as an always-growing human being; believed by client-centered therapists to be the master motive
Self-efficacy
In Bandura’s theory, the person’s belief that he or she can achieve certain goals
Sublimation
Defence mechanism entailing the conversion of sexual or aggressive impulses into socially valued behaviours, especially creative activity
Successive Approximations
Responses that closer and closer resemble the desired response in operant conditioning
Superego
In psychoanalytic theory, the part of the personality that acts as the conscience and reflects society’s moral standards as learned from parents and teachers
Sympathetic Nervous System
The division of the autonomic nervous system that acts on bodily systems–for example, contracting the blood vessels, reducing activity of the intestines, and increasing the heartbeat–to prepare the organism for exertion, emotional stress, or extreme cold
Synapse
A small gap between two neutrons where the nerve impulse passes from the axion of the first to the dendrites, cell body, or axon of the second
Systematic Desensitization
A major behaviour therapy procedure that has a fearful person, while deeply relaxed, imagine a series of progressively more fearsome situations. The two responses of relaxation and fear are incompatible and fear is dispelled. This technique is useful for treating psychological problems in which anxiety is the principal difficulty
Temperament
An individual difference variable that reflects variability in tendencies such as emotionality and activity level that are believed to reflect, in part, biologically inherited differences
Transference
The venting of the client’s emotions, either positive or negative, by treating the psychoanalyst as the symbolic representative of someone important in the past. An example id the client’s becoming angry with the psychoanalyst to release emotions actually felt toward his or her father
Twin Method
Research strategy in behaviour genetics in which concordance rates of monozygotic and dizygotic twins are compared
Unconditional Positive Regard
According to Rogers, a crucial attitude for the client-centered therapist to adopt toward the client, who needs to feel complete acceptance as a person in order to evaluate the extent to which current behaviour contributes to self-actualization
Unconscious
A state of unawareness without sensation or thought. In psychoanalytic theory, it is the part of the personality, in particular the id impulses, or id energy, of which the ego is unaware
Under-controlled Type
One of the three personality types found among children. Under controlled children are often impulsive and lack self control and are prone to engaging in risky behaviours throughout their adolescence and adult periods
