Psychological Disorders Flashcards
Comorbidity
Existence of multiple psychological disorders at once. Some disorders are more likely to be comorbid than others
Lifetime prevalence rate
Likelihood that someone will experience a psychological disorder
50-70% of people will have an APA recognized psychological disorder
Etiology
Relative cause and history of disorders
Epidemiology
Study of the population distribution of disorders, gives us prevalence rates
Misconceptions about insanity defense and violence rates
Insanity defense: very uncommon and unsuccessful because you have to admit to doing an action but claim you didn’t understand what you were doing
Violence rates: many believe mental disorders are correlated with violence, violence in people with mental disorders is disproportionate to size of population (3-5%), and people with mental disorders are more likely to be the target of crimes.
Criteria for abnormal behavior
Deviance: are they behaving differently from others (historically influential in creating/diagnosing disorders, less commonly used now)
Maladaptive: does behavior interfere with day to day life
Personal stress: how much stress is the behavior causing the individual
Value judgements: criteria are subjective and require judgement
Symptoms: not every disorder has the same symptoms
DSM 5
Diagnostic and statistical manual
Contains every recognized psychological disorders, and every recognized symptom of psychological disorders.
DSM 5 categories are more spectral, previously more categorical
Types of neurodevelomental disorders
Intellectual disabilities: issue with intelligence, required to show signs in childhood
Learning disorders: issue with learning, not required to show signs in childhood but typically do
ADHD
High level of impulsivity, difficulty in following through with tasks, difficulties in attention or focus
ASD
Issues with sociality with peers and authority figures, tendency for hyperfixation
Trends in gender and ADHD/ASD diagnosis
Boys are diagnosed at higher rates in boys than girls. It is theorized this is because girls are better at managing and hiding symptoms
Depressive disorders
Disorders with depression as a major symptom
Major depressive disorder: most common depressive disorder, 7% of Americans meet criteria for diagnosis
Seasonal affective depression: cyclical recurrence of depression matched with seasonal changes, due to lack of vitamin D, important for serotonin
Persistent depressive disorder: constant, long lasting depression that is too mild to meet requirements for MDD
Depressive episodes
Age of onset: First occurrence of depressive episodes must be prior to age 40
Recurrence: if you have depression once, it is likely that it will happen again. People who have depressive episodes will typically have 5-6 throughout their lifetime
Symptoms of depressive disorders
Anhedonia: lack of joy. Can be from things you previously enjoyed, which can even worsen depression
Sleep: can sleep too little or too much, but never restorative sleep
Depressive realism: people who are depressed tend to be more realistic about the world
Depressive Brains: tend to be less active
Helplessness theory: cycle of attributions that reinforce depression (internal, stable, global)
Mania symptoms
Abbreviated DIGFAST
Distractibility
Indiscretion: less care for social norms
Grandiosity: grand ideas of themselves, capabilities and world around them
Flight of ideas: difficult to have a conversation with manic person, brain constantly jumping between ideas
Activity increased: great at starting projects, not at finishing them
Sleeplessness: lack of sleep, even for days on end
Talkativeness: talk a lot, to other people and themselves
Why is bipolar often misdiagnosed as MDD?
They feel great about themselves during mania, so will only seek help during depressive episodes. This is an issue because you cannot treat them the same, and bipolar patients treated as if they have MDD tend to have major manic episodes after
Types of bipolar
Bipolar I: severe symptomology for both manic and depressive episodes
Bipolar II: less severe mania, still severe depressive phase
Cyclothymia: less severe in both phases compared to BPI
Correlates of bipolar
Creativity: many great artists/thinkers tend to have bipolar
Heritability: Strong genetic component to bipolar
Anxiety symptoms
Strong negative emotions
Physical apprehension: triggers fight/flight in non dangerous situations
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Generalized feeling of dread and something going wrong in the future
Phobias
illogical fears of non dangerous things that most people do not fear. Sometimes from experience, usually genetic (runs in families or evolutionary)
4 most common phobias
Acrophobia: fear of heights
Claustrophobia: fear of tight, confined spaces
Brontophobia: fear of storms/thunder/lightning
Hydrophobia: fear of water/drowning
OCD
Associated with high anxiety and little control over ones compulsions and intrusive thoughts. Will be aware that they are acting irrationally but cannot control it.
The obsession itself is GAD, the compulsion makes it OCD
Body dysmorphic disorder
Unrealistic perception of one’s physical flaws. Often worried about how others perceive flaw. Cannot physically fix these flaws because their perception is not rooted in reality. Correlated with agoraphobia
PTSD
Unique in the DSM because it has singular cause: traumatic event.
Symptoms: hypervigilance (always looking around them, constant conscious/unconscious reexperiencing of traumatic event.
Excessive reconsolidation leads to memories being remembered as worse, making PTSD worse
Tendency for smaller hippocampus in victims
Children w/ PTSD will reenact it when they play
Disordered cognitions in anxiety patients
Misinterpreting harmless situations as harmless, focus on perceiving threats, selective recall (only remembering things that support our anxiety)
Origins of anxiety
Learning through OC
Overactive anterior cingulate cortex: monitors and checks for behavior errors
Genetic: can be heritable
GABA deficiency: GABA is inhibitory, without it it is easier to get into cyclical illogical thought patterns
Types of anxiety disorders
GAD, phobias, OCD, PTSD, Body dysmorphia
Schizophrenia symptoms
Person’s mind is split from reality
Hallucinations: sensations w/o external stimuli, typically auditory, and brain responds as if they are really receiving the stimulus
Delusion: hold false beliefs or exaggerations not based in reality, can be severe and ridiculous (some believe they have superpowers/are being followed)
Catatonia: less common, remain in strange/seemingly uncomfortable position for hours on end
Overproduction of dopamine (not always)
Genetics: very high heritability rate
Types of schizophrenia in DSM 5
Acute: previously well adjusted/typical people suddenly develop extreme schizophrenic symptomology. Is easier to treat, episodes tend to be shorter, can be due to diathesis stress model.
Chronic: develops much slower, symptoms are more persistent, episodes are longer, harder to treat.
Odd-eccentric personality disorder cluster
Person feels odd or different that others. Schizoid personality disorder falls under this category
Schizoid
Falls under odd-eccentric, person has lack of interest in social interactions, are a blank slate, do not have much emotional reaction to the outside world
Dramatic-emotional/erratic
Associated with impulsivity and attention seeking behaviors. BPD and APD fall under this category
Borderline personality disorder
Difficulty managing emotions, maintaining relationships. Inconsistent self image, diagnosed more in women.
Antisocial personality disorder
Do not care for social norms or expectations, aggressive and reactive. More diagnosed in men, also common in criminals and police officers
Anxious-fearful personality disorder cluster
Associated with high levels of anxiety, artificially restrict their behavior to cope with it. OCPD falls under this category
OCPD
Like OCD, but patients do not have the same cognitive obsessions, they believe their behaviors are rational. Rigid in patterns and behaviors
Somatic disorders
Related to bodily awareness and anxiety
Illness anxiety disorder, factitious disorder falls under this category
Illness anxiety disorder
Cognitively obsessed with illness, constantly checking for symptoms. Will do things like constantly take temperature blood pressure
Factitious disorder vs factitious disorder imposed on another
Factitious: Artificially create illness symptoms for the attention/social response from being sick
Imposed on another: Create illness symptoms in another for the attention/social response of the nurse role, common form of child/elder abuse. Has a mortality because some will poison the target.
Dissociative disorders
Marked by extreme issues with memory or identity. DID, dissociative amnesia fall under this category
DID
Belief that one has different identities within oneself, and they come to the forefront at different times.
Controversial disorder: some strongly believe it exists, some believe it doesn’t
Dissociative amnesia
Will not remember an event or certain aspects of a traumatic event as a defense mechanism
Dissociative fugue
People will end up traveling to a new place with no memory of who they are or how they got there. It is recognized as a part of amnesia rather than dissociative disorders. Is separated from retrograde amnesia because it is not typically associated with a physical injury
Suicide rates by demographic
Higher suicide rates: people in western nations, white people, Native American people, males, 85+ people, rich people, non-religious people, unmarried people, LGBTQ+ youth w/o parental support, people w/ alcohol abuse disorder, people in rural areas
Gender differences in suicide
Women are more likely to attempt suicide, men are 4x more likely to die by suicide because they are more likely to use guns
Suicide trends by day of the week/month
Highest suicide rate on wednesdays, and April/may
Effects of suicide exposure
Those who have someone in their circle die of suicide are more likely to as well
