Mental Illness Flashcards
What are the three types of mental disorders?
Anxiety disorders
Affective disorders (mood disorders)
Schizophrenia
What are psychosocial approaches to mental illness?
Psychotherapy treatment: -relies solely on verbal communication to help the patient
What is the difference between mood and emotions?
Emotions: transient responses to specific stimuli in the environment (danger), the body (pain), or mind (thoughts)
Mood: an emotional state that is prolonged, one’s predominant emotional state
What is fear?
Adaptive response to threatening situations expressed by the sympathetic division of the ANS
What do mood and anxiety disorders involve? Give examples
Negative emotional states.
- overlapping neural circuits
- overlapping risk factors
- 60% of patients with major depressive disorder also suffer from an anxiety disorder
- anxiety disorder most commonly precedes the onset of depression
What are anxiety disorders?
Abnormal regulation of the emotion of fear
What are disorders characterized by increased anxiety?
- PTSD
- OCD
What is normal stress response?
- avoidance response to real threat
- avoidance behavior
- increased vigilance and arousal
- activation of sympathetic division of ANS
- release of cortisol from the adrenal glands
- usually transient
What is the HPA axis responsible for the normal stress response?
Hypothalamus: in response to stress, secretes corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH)
Pituitary: in response to CRH, releases adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)
Adrenal: in response to ACTH, releases cortisol:
- increases blood pressure
- increases available blood glucose for fight or flight
- increased vigilance and arousal in the brain
- reduced immune activity
- transient
What regulates the HPA axis?
Hypothalamic secretions of CRH are regulated by input from hippocampus and amygdala
What is the amygdala important for?
What does a disregulation of the amygdala entail?
- critical to fear responses
- disregulation of amygdala is associated with some anxiety disorders
What does the hippocampus do?
- has glucocorticoid receptors which respond to cortisol
- suppresses CRH release in response to cortisol
What do we call the way the amygdala and the hippocampus regulate the HPA axis?
Push-pull fashion
What do we associate anxiety disorders with (regarding amygdala and hippocampus)
Hyperactivity Of the amygdala or hypo activity of hippocampus
What are the two types of remedies for anxiety disorders?
-psychotherapy: gradually expose the patient to the stimuli that produce the anxiety——Reinforce the notion that the stimuli are not dangerous
-Anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing drugs)
2 types: benzodiazepines: bind to GABA receptor and enhance function —> suppress activity in brain circuits including those used in stress response
Alcohol has same effect
What is another type of anxiolytic drug (not benzodiazepine or ethanol)?
SSRI’s (serotonin-selective Reuptake inhibitors)
-prolong actions of 5-HT by blocking Reuptake
What is SSRI’s effect on the hippocampus?
- increase number of glucocorticoid receptors in hippocampus
- increase neurogenesis in the hilpocampus
What are the two types of mood disorders?
- major depression
- bipolar depression
What is the monoamine hypothesis?
- idea that mood disorders arose from depleted levels of serotonin and neuroepinephrine
- monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO inhibitors) used to treat tuberculosis caused elevations in mood
What do antidepressant drugs do?
Elevate levels of serotonin, norepinephrine or dopamine in synapse
What are the three types of treatments for depression?
MAO inhibitors: enhance NE and 5-HT action by preventing enzymatic destruction
Tricyclics: enhance NE and 5-HT action by blocking Reuptake
SSRI’s: enhance 5-HT action by blocking Reuptake of 5-HT
What is another hypothesis for affective disorders? (Not monoamine hypothesis)
What does the keyword mean
The diathesis - stress hypothesis
Diathesis: genetic predisposition
This hypothesis says that there is a hyperactivity of the HPA system associated with anxiety disorders
- elevated cortisol
- elevated CRH
- enlargement of the amygdala
- reduced volume of hippocampus
What is another reason for affective disorders? Not the 2 first ones
Anterior Cingulate Cortex Dysfunction
Activity here increased by autobiographical recall of sad event
Is schizophrenia only transmitted through genetics? If not, explain.
Mainly but not only. There are other factors influencing the appearance of schizophrenia:
- New mutations
- Epigenetics (how environment, nutrition and social conditions affect how genes are expressed)
- drug use or difficult pregnancy/birth
