PSY1022 WEEK 6 ABNORM 2 Flashcards
ANXIETY DISORDERS
Most prevalent of all mental disorders. 29% of people will have one at some point in their life. Onset is earlier than for most other disorders (average age 11).
SOMATOFORM DISORDERS
Condition marked by physical symptoms that suggest an underlying medical illness, but that are actually psychological in origin. Freud called this “grande hysteria”
HYPOCHONDRIASIS
An individual’s continual preoccupation with the notion that he has a serious physical disease. Somatoform disorder.
GENERALISED ANXIETY DISORDER (GAD)
Continual feelings of worry, anxiety, physical tension, and irritability, across many areas of life functioning. 3% of the population. 60% of the day worrying, compared with 18% gen pop. ⅓ have it develop after major stressful event or lifestyle change. More likely to be female, middle-aged, widowed or divorce, poor.
Unpredictable events in childhood may predispose people to this.
Or may manifest later in life after major change.
PANIC ATTACK
Brief, intense episode of extreme fear characterised by sweating, dizziness, light-headedness, racing heartbeat, and feelings of impending death or going crazy. Often mistaken for heart attacks.
PANIC DISORDER
Repeated and unexpected panic attacks, along with persistent concerns about future attacks or a change in personal behaviour in an attempt to avoid them. Often develops in early adulthood. Most people develop agoraphobia.
SPECIFIC PHOBIAS
Intense fear of an object or situation that’s greatly out of proportion to its actual threat. Many disappear with ages.
AGORAPHOBIA
Fear of being in a place or situation from which escape is difficult or embarrassing, or in which help is unavailable in the event of a panic attack. Common misconception that it is a fear of crowds. Typically emerges midteens, and is usually a direct outgrowth of panic disorder. Malls, movie theatres, tunnels, bridges, or wide-open spaces.
SOCIAL PHOBIA
Marked fear of public appearances in which embarrassment or humiliation seems likely. Beyond stage fright. Can be speaking, swallowing, swimming, etc.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
Marked emotional disturbance after experiencing or witnessing a severely stressful event. Event must be physically dangerous or life-threatening, either to oneself or someone else.
Manifests if person can’t make sense of the trauma.
Flashbacks. Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, places and conversations associated with the trauma, recurrent dreams of the trauma, increased arousal. Panic attacks. Nightmares. Difficult to diagnose.
OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER
Condition marked by repeated and lengthy (at least one hour per day) immersion in obsessions, compulsions, or both. Usually centre on “unacceptable” thoughts eg fears of being dirty or killing others. Typically are disturbed by their thoughts and see them as irrational, but can’t make them stop. Also develop compulsions.
OBSESSION
Persistent idea, thought, or impulse that is unwanted and inappropriate, causing marked distress.
COMPULSION
Repetitive behaviour or mental act performed to reduce or prevent stress.
- Repeatedly checking locks, doors, etc.
- Arranging and rearranging objects.
- Washing and cleaning.
- Performing tasks in a set way.
- Touching or tapping objects.
- Hoarding.
LEARNING MODELS OF ANXIETY
Operant conditioning.
Also can acquire fears by observing others engage in fearful behaviours.
And fears can stem from information or misinformation from others.
CATASTROPHISING AND ANXIETY SENSITIVITY
People catastrophise when they predict terrible events, such as contracting a life threatening illness, from turning a door knob.
People with anxiety sensitivity have a fear of anxiety-related sensations (dizziness, heart racing, short of breath). Normal physical reactions get catastrophised and can lead to a panic attack.
ANXIETY: BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCES
Anxiety is genetically influenced. Biologically GAD and major depression same thing.
People with OCD twice as likely to inherit a specific overactive gene related to transport of seratonin.
OCD is malfuntion of caudate nucleus.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
A psychological intervention designed to help people resolve emotional, behavioural, and interpersonal problems and improve the quality of their lives.
Patients in are more likely to be women. Less likely to be from an ethnic group.
Better adjusted clients respond better. Also people with anxiety. Or temporary problems.
PARAPROFESSIONAL
Person with no professional training who provides a mental health service.
EFFECTIVE PSYCHOTHERAPIST
More likely to be:
- warm and direct
- positive working relationship with clients
- tend not to contradict clients
- select important topics to focus on in sessions
INSIGHT THERAPIES
Psychotherapies, including psychodynamic, humanistic, and group approaches, with the goal of expanding awareness or insight.
- negative is can’t rule out rival hypotheses.
PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPIES
Three core beliefs:
- Abnormal behaviours stem from adverse childhood experiences.
- Strive to analyze: distressing thoughts and feelings clients avoid, wishes and fantasies, recurring themes and life patterns, significant past events, and therapeutic relationship.
- When clients achieve insight into previously unconscious material the causes and symptoms will become evident, often causing symptoms to disappear.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
One of the first forms of psychotherapy. Goal to decrease guilt and frustration and to make the unconscious conscious. - Free association - Interpretation - Dream analysis - Resistance - Transference - Working through
FREE ASSOCIATION
Technique in which clients express themselves without censorship of any sort.
RESISTANCE
Attempts to avoid confrontation and anxiety associated with uncovering previously repressed thoughts, emotions, and impulses.
