Pschopathology Flashcards
Anxiety disorders
Intense, frequent or inappropriate anxiety, but no loss of reality contact. Includes phobias, generalized anxiety reactions, panic disorders, OCD, and PTSD.
Mood (affective) disorders
Marked disturbances of mood, including depression and mania (extreme elation and excitement).
Somatoform Disorders
Physical symptoms such as blindness, paralysis or pain, that have no physical basis and are assumed to be caused by psychological factors. Also hypochondria
Dissociative disorders
Psychologically caused problems of consciousness and self-identification, including amnesia and multiple personality disorder
Schizophrenic disorder
Severe disorders of thinking, perception and emotion that involve loss of contact with reality and disordered behavior.
Substance abuse disorders
Personal and social problems associated with the use of psychoactive substances such as alcohol or drugs.
Sexual and gender identity disorders
Inability to function sexually or enjoy sexuality, deviant sexual behaviors such as child molestation and arousal by inappropriate objects. Strong discomfort with one’s gender accompanied by the desire to be a member of he opposite sex.
Eating disorders
Anorexia nervosa. And bulimia nervosa.
Personality disorders
Rigid, stable and maladaptive personality patterns such as antisocial, dependent, paranoid and narcissistic disorders
Vulnerability-stress model (diathesis-stress model)
Everyone has a degree of vulnerability for developing a psychological disorder given sufficient stress.
Mental illness
A condition which causes serious disorder in a persons behavior or thinking
Axis 1
Clinical disorders eg. Schizophrenia, depression
Axis 2
Mental retardation (life long disorders)
Axis 3
General medical conditions
Axis 4
Social and environmental problems
Axis 5
Global assessment of functioning (0 to 100. Suicidal to perfect)
Benefits of diagnostic classification system
Acknowledgement to people’s suffering
Facilitates communication between clinicians
Facilitates treatment planning for specific problems
Allows research to be conducted in a consistent way
Concerns about DSM diagnostic classification system
Who decides what is normal and abnormal
Locates illness rather than the toxic environment
Labeling g and stigmatization
Overlap between diagnostic categories
Cultural differences not adequately recognized.
Anxiety
A state of tension and apprehension
A natural response to a perceived threat
Anxiety disorders
Frequency and intensity of anxiety responses are out of proportion to the situations that trigger them. Anxiety interferes with daily life
Phobias
Strong, irrational fears of certain objects or situations.
Aware that fears are irrational
Feelings of helplessness
Efforts to avoid the object/situation
Extremely fearful physical, emotional and cognitive responses when presented with the object/situation
Agoraphobia
Fear of open or public places from which escaping would be difficult.
Social phobias
Excessive fear of situations in which the person might be evaluated and possibly embarrassed
Phobias development.
Can occur at any point in life but mostly in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
Often intensify and broaden over time.
Need intervention to go away
Inconvenient phobias
Aerophobia
Ailurophobia-fear of cats
Generalized anxiety disorder
Chronic state of anxiety
Not attached to specific cause
Free floating anxiety
Significant interference with daily functioning
Panic disorder
Sudden and unpredictable panic attacks.
Unidentifiable stimulus brings on panic attacks.
Persistent fear of more panic attacks(leads to agoraphobia fear of public places).
Physical symptoms intense and short lived
OCD
Has two components- cognitive and behavioral
Obsessions-repetitive and unwelcome thoughts, images or impulses that invade consciousness, very difficult to control.
Compulsions- repetitive behavioral responses that can be resisted but only with great difficulty
PTSD
Severe anxiety disorder that can occur in people who have been exposed to a traumatic life event.
Experiences severe symptoms of anxiety, arousal and distress that were not present before the traumatic event.
Reliving event in flashbacks, dreams and fantasies
Feeling of numbness
Avoidance of reminders of trauma
Survivor guilt.
Inferred anxiety
Present in somatoform and dissociative disorders. (Not consciously feel any anxiety). Function is to protect the person from the strong psychological conflict.
Hypochondriasis
Eg of a somatoform disorder.