OCD and PTSD Flashcards
What is nosology?
How medicine classifies illness
What are some methods of classification?
- By cause: illnesses with the same fundamental cause are thought to be the same disorder
- By symptoms: patterns of thought, moods, and behaviours (assume symptoms stem from same underlying cause)
What are the 3 main challenges to developing a classification system for mental disorder? What are the challenges for each?
- symptom overlap
- some symptoms are common to many mental illnesses
- challenge: determining the dividing lines between different mental disorders - heterogeneity
- people with the same diagnosis may have different symptoms are are presented differently
- challenges: difficult to explain behaviours and determine best treatment - classification is symptom based
What is OCD? List its symptoms and prevalence rate.
obsessive compulsive disorder
- manifestation of anxiety revolving around obsessive and intrusive thoughts
- obsessions = disruptive, anxiety producing thoughts and/or mental images (uncontrollable thoughts)
- compulsions = repetitive actions or thoughts which are performed to relieve anxieties (cleaning, counting, checking things)
- chronic (lasts through person’s lifetime)
- individuals often attempt to avoid triggers
- affects 1-3% of US population
What is PTSD? List its symptoms
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- arises from traumatic event or repeated trauma over a period of weeks, months, or years
- events involve experiencing or witnessing severe harm, injury, danger, or death
- more than just combat-related trauma (can be indirect exposure)
- reliving trauma, dissociative episodes, nightmare, negative moods, sleep disruption, tension
How are OCD and PTSD similar?
- have shared symptoms and treatments
- anxiety, attempts to avoid triggers
- OCD may manifest following experiences of trauma
- similar treatments (CBT and exposure-base therapy)
How are OCD and PTSD different?
- obsessions and compulsions are very different experiences than flashbacks
- OCD not always triggered by traumatic incident
What are 2 examples of related disorders? Why are they significant?
- Somatic Symptom Disorder
- previously called conversion disorder
- people who have anxiety and/or fixation on somatic symptoms such as headache and pain
- may or may not have diagnosis for physical illness that is causing symptoms
- “excessive and abnormal” psychological reaction to physical symptoms - Illness Anxiety Disorder
- previously called hypochondriasis
- excessive worry about possibility of becoming ill
BOTH demonstrate the complex link between physical and mental health
List and describe the 2 clinical perspectives
- Positivist perspective
- sees scientific knowledge as always evolving
- assumes we can acquire concrete knowledge about a topic using technology and reason - Constructivists perspective
- sees knowledge as fluid and contextual
- understanding of a phenomena is influenced by our social position and experiences
- decisions on what we study and how we think about it are influenced by culture, politics, scientific trends, etc.
Why are there debates regarding OCD symptoms?
- people with OCD experience it in different ways while being given the same diagnosis
- believe there are “subtypes”
- infrequent that people with OCD present with only one subtype of symptom
Symptom Dimension
- based on Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) - symptoms checklist
- 7 obsessions (aggressive, contamination, sexual, religious), 6 compulsions (cleaning, checking, repeating)
What are the limitations to the symptom dimension developed by Yale?
- derived rationally than empirically
- based on pre-existing assumptions rather than observable and objective phenomena
Autogenous Symptoms and Reactive Symptoms model
- Autogenous = self-generated triggers (sexual or aggressive thoughts)
- Reactive = triggered by external stimuli (contamination or symmetry)
What is the core dimensions model?
- defines dimensions based on symptoms theme
- retains heterogeneity in symptoms but still identify key dimensions in classification of OCD
What does a PTSD diagnosis require?
- intrusive thoughts
- avoidance of trauma-related stimuli
- negative alterations in cognition and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity
