Mental Health and Psychiatry Flashcards
Where does all the computing stuff happen in the brain?
IDk - cerebral cortex I think?
How thick is the cerebral cortex and what happens if you peel it off?
2-5mm thick area – filled with lots of stuff??
Why is the brain not like a computer?
Everytime something is done in the brain e.g. thought / experience, it changes the brain / neuronal structure to adapt – unlike circuit board = fixed
What are the 4 basic functions of the brain?
Take all info, stream, assemble into a coherent pic of reality. Make sense of the info into internal models of the world + maps, can be used ot predict what the organism does in the future in a way to maximise its survival. Maximise efficiency – use brainstem / cerebellum which is less ‘expensive’ than the e.g. motor cortex
What is neuroplasticity?
Constant adaptation + changing of the brain – v. high during infancy and childhood
What is compulsion?
Copy off slide
What are the 2 components of anxiety?
State anxiety -
Trait anxiety - exists in everyone, all at diff levels. High = v. anxious. Low = chill + laid back
Why does state anxiety exist?
Similar to pain - motivate us to withdraw or avoid things that may potentially damage us
Motivation to avoid harm
Why is trait anxiety important?
Propensity to become anxious over given
circumstances
Involves various stressors
Does anxiety have a genetic component?
Yes - has a useful genetic trait in survival
What is the mortality rate for high anxiety?
Low mortality rate than those with low anxiety - More likely to survive - good for survival
Why did anxiety develop as a trait in humans?
In response to threat for protection
How is state anxiety induced / kept around?
Through conditioning and avoidance of something fearful
Difficult to unlearn the conditioning
How to unlearn anxiety? And what makes you keep anxiety to certain situations?
By visiting what scares you / facing it to unlearn the fear response associated with that thing
Avoidance behaviour
What is rumination?
State of mind that prompts us to imagine bad things will happen to anticipate all outcomes
What is attentional and cognitive bias?
Paying attention to the negative aspects of a situation / focusing on the things that can worry you
Overall what are the 3 main components of state anxiety?
- Avoidance
- Attentional and cognitive bias
- Rumination
What causes the shift from normal / regular levels of state anxiety to developing clinical anxiety?
Over activation of this system - exposure to stressors that keep this mechanism activated leading to overactivation
Eventually affects every day life
So what is anxiety disorder?
Self-perpetuating network of positive feedback loops, arising from normal adaptive systems
Anxiety is a response to?
Unpredicatable, uncertain threats
What eases anxiety?
Having some means of controlling what will happen to you, even if the bad thing will happen, some control of when/ where
How can anxiety develop?
Continuous intrusive thoughts
Reinforcement
Increasingly low self-worth - develop into a depressive episode
What is depression?
Not just sadness, mixture of many emotions - anger, fear, shame, guilt - absense of feeling / numbness - inability to feel positive things, debilitating
Feels like you are separated from positive emotions
Low mood, low energy, anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure in activities), lack of motivation
Chronic
How does depression develop?
Depressogenic stressor = contributor / starter - chronic stress leads to recuperative response
Chronic stress causes you to avoid things to ‘save energy’ - withdrawal to ‘heal’ from illness /chronic stress
But this leads to a cycle of withdrawal and lack of motivation and low mood
Becomes depression due to overwhelming response …? (overwhelms homeostasis)
Leads to low self-worth - result of brain processing all this info
Leads to cognitive bias - ‘see evidence of the low self-worth’ every where they go - feeding into cycle of symptoms
Self-sustaining - social withdrawal further decreases self worth
Leads to hopelessness - feel trapped, nothing good in the future
What is a big factor in suicidality?
Hopelessness - can be picked up more easily clinically
What is co-morbid with depression often?
Anxiety
Because low self worth = screw up everything = leads to being v. anxious
Can lead to avoidance of things e.g. social situations, feeds into low self worth etc.
An ongoing cycle
What is self-harm? What does it encapsulate?
Not suicidal self-injury - not just cutting, also involves hair-pulling, scratching, skin picking etc.
Some suicidal injuries
Why do people self-harm?
Belief they deserve to be punished
Alleviate pain from guilt / shame etc.
To feel something as depression makes you numb? - reprive from total emptiness felt during depression
For endorphine release - Injury response (numbs pain and fear temporarily to escape whatever injured you)
Control over something bad happening to you / control over the punishment received / inflicted, less anxiety provoking - temporary relief from anxiety
May hate themselves
What is the stigma around self-harm?
Attention seeking / ‘communicate function’
Majority do it in privacy though, as a society we only see those who do it ‘publicly’ perhaps for communicative purposes - skewed vision / perception from society
Why does self-harm become a compulsion?
Negative reinforcement - rewarding to feel RELIEF even if it is temporary
Negative = taking away discomfort
What are distress reducing behaviours for temporary?
Self harm
Substance abuse
Disordered eating
Compulsive rituals
Why does distress reducing behaviour stick / develop into a compulsion?
Conditioning - negative reinforcement for operant conditioning
Makes you feel the need to engage in this behaviour to get the temporary relief
Becomes habitual
Why does compulsion become habitual?
No need to think about it anymore, a circuit in the brain, no need for conscious thinking - frees up frontal lobe
Why are compulsions worrying / clinically relevant?
Unable to choose to do that action - just happens
Action is often / usually damaging and they have little / no control over it
What is addiction?
Dumbass, you missed it
What is the cocaine study?
..?
One drip had saline, other had v. low dose of cocaine - cannot physically tell it has cocaine
How does cocaine act according to this study?
On a subconscious level
What is the rat cocaine study?
Isolation Vs. social context
What contributes / drives development of addiction?
Constant state of pain / lack of social support
What is OCD?
Obsessions and compulsions - anxiety is a huge component
Intrusive thoughts that are mulled over and v. distressing and involuntary = obsessions
Compulsions = to relieve the state of anxiety / tension
How does OCD develop?
Negative reinforcement - driven by distress caused by obsession that is temporarily relieved by the compulsion
= Habit formation
Not a conscious thought to do it again
Reinforced because at first, it does not disrupt daily life, progressively gets worse = debilitating, spirals
What are eating disorders about?
States of anxiety - not just about the food or weight
Anxiety about self-image, self-esteem, etc.
Low self-worth
What perceptions are eating disorders built on?
Healthy food = good, unhealthy food = bad, thin = beautiful, obese = ugly, losing weight = success
Anxiety and self-worth can take these perceptions to an extreme level
What do eating disorders commonly consist of?
Restrictions on diet
Misuse of laxative etc.
How do eating disorders develop? E.g. bulimia
Stems from low self-worth and anxiety
Can cause a person to restrict their diet, but then accidentally eat, intrusive negative thoughts = ‘failure’ e.g. to control / restrict diet; causes person to eat more ‘whats the point, i’m worthless, cant do this’ (binge eating / loss of control); loss of control can make a person feel intense distress (anxious and miserable); can drive a person to make themselves sick = PURGE (get rid of the food) ‘ i hate food, its making me fat’; causes temporary relief; then the cycle begins again (when they eat again)
Negative reinforcement
How do eating disorders develop? E.g. anorexia nervosa
Stems from low self-worth and anxiety
Can cause a person to restrict their diet, leads to feeling of safety, control and achievement (can’t control anything else in their life, BUT can control their diet = feeling accomplished and safe); results in weight loss = further reinforcement - moving towards body type they want (perhaps get compliments which reinforces this)
Sometimes anxiety comes back stronger e.g. when others comment on it = stronger diet restrictions to try and feel safer
In anorexia, gaining weight = horrifying, catastrophic (how they feel)
Weight loss = brain starvation = cognitive inflexibility (many anorexic patients have strange rituals - v. fixed from brain starvation)
How do eating disorders develop? E.g. obesity?
Stems from low self-worth and anxiety
Can cause a person to seek high calorie foods = neural reward to help temporarily fix low self worth and anxiety; cycle repeats
What are the different components of madness?
Psychosis, delerium, dementia, brain injuries / strokes, schizophrenia, mania, depression, puerperal psychosis
Drugs, metabolic, endocrine
Rsult of the mind not being able to cope with all of these
Psychosis is clinically generally composed of?
Hallucinations
Delusions / thought disorders
What LEADS to psychosis?
Reality failure - inaccurate perception and interpretation of the world / info
What is consciousness?
Modular not unitary - parallel processing, constant adaptation to make more sense of the world
Conscious awareness selected by attention
What happens to sensory input?
Modified preconsciously to fit our expectations - by filling in gaps and tricking you into seeing htings that are different / incorrect
What are auditory verbal hallucinations and why do they not automatically lead to a diagnosis of SZ?
hearing voices
Healthy and accepted in some cultures to hear spirits and speak to them
What leads to diagnosis of SZ?
When interrupts with daily life - association with delusions
What are delusions?
Fixed, false, unshakeable belief - OUT of context with cultural background
What are the 2 types of symptoms of SZ?
With positive and negative symptoms
What are the positive symptoms of SZ and what are the negative symptoms or SZ?
\+ve = hallucinations, delusions -ve = lack of motivation, speech poverty, low mood etc.
What else is SZ composed of?
Disturbance in fundamental components of experience / self
Everything is about them
Biological basis of SZ?
Excess dopamine
On scans, auditory centres in the brain are activated during auditory hallucinations etc.
What is the role of dopamine?
Reward system
How genetic is SZ?
idk
How can there be a genetic component to SZ?
…
What are the 5 potential causes of SZ / psychosis?
copy off slide
What are the treatments for SZ?
…
What kind of medications help with psychosis?
…
What are the side effects of dopamine blockades
too many
What is the perception of mental illness via the media?
Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence rather than cause violence
Rates of violence only a bit higher in only SOME specific groups
