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.
TRANSFERENCE
Projecting intense, unrealistic feelings and expectations from the past onto the therapist.
INDIVIDUATION
The integration of opposing aspects of the personality into a harmonious “whole,” namely the self.
Jung.
INTERPERSONAL THERAPY (IPT)
Treatment what strengthens social skills and targets interpersonal problems, conflicts, and life transitions.
Collaborative undertaking between client and therapist. Analyst is participant observer.
Short term intervention (12 to 16 sessions).
Effective for depression, substance abuse, eating disorders.
Harry Stack Sullivan.
HUMANISTIC THERAPIES
Therapies that emphasise the development of human potential and the belief that human nature is basically positive.
Focus on the present.
Importance of assuming responsibility for decisions.
- reject interpretive techniques of psychoanalysis.
Carl Rogers.
PERSON-CENTERED THERAPY
Therapy centering on the client’s goals and ways of solving problems.
Carl Rogers.
Therapist must satisfy 3 conditions:
- must be an authentic, genuine person who reveals his or her own reactions to what the client is communicating.
- must express unconditional positive regard of all feelings the client expresses.
- must relate to clients with empathic understanding.
REFLECTION
Mirroring back the clients feelings.
Carl Rogers.
GESTALT THERAPY
Therapy that aims to integrate different and sometimes opposing aspects of personality into a unified sense of self.
Fritz Perls.
Two-chair technique (patient moves between). Allows synthesis of opposing sides.
GROUP THERAPY
Therapy that treats more than one person at a time.
Jacob Moreno.
Efficient, time-saving, less costly.
Research shows effective for a wide range of problems and about as helpful as individual treatments.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
Twelve-Step, self-help program that provides social support for achieving sobriety.
Not supported by research.
CONTROLLED DRINKING
Drinking in moderation. Teach alcoholics to set limits and drink moderately. Opposite of AA. More supported by research.
RELAPSE PREVENTION (RP)
Assumes that many people with alcoholism will at some point experience a relapse. Teaches people not to feel ashamed, guilty, or discouraged. A lapse doesn’t equal relapse.
STRATEGIC FAMILY INTERVENTIONS
Family therapy approach designed to remove barriers to effective communication.
Families often scapegoat one family member as the “identified patient” with the problem. For therapist real source is dysfunction in whole family.
STRUCTURAL FAMILY THERAPY.
Treatment in which therapists deeply involve themselves in family activities to change how family members arrange and organise interactions.
Minuchin.
Research says no more effective than individual therapy.
DIRECTIVES
Strategic family therapy.
Planned tasks that family members carry out. Shift how family members solve problems and interact.
PARADOXICAL REQUESTS
Strategic family therapy.
Also called “reverse psychology”.
BEHAVIOUR THERAPIST
Therapist who focuses on specific behaviours, and current variables that maintain problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Learning - classical, operant, and observational.
