Psychological Disorders Flashcards
Diagnoses are dependent on what?
Culture
Anxiety Disorders
- Generalized Anxiety disorder
- Panic Disorder
- Phobias
- Obsessive Compulsive disorder
- Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder
Generalized Anxiety Disorder Symptoms
Dizziness, sweating palms, heart racing, subjective worry or nervousness with no apparent cause
Generalized Anxiety Disorder Criteria
- Excessive anxiety, multiple times in a week
- person finds it difficult to control the worry
- anxiety associated with: on edge, fatigued easily, difficult concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, sleep disturbance
- Anxiety is not confined with features of other anxieties such as phobias
- Anxiety & psychical symptoms are clinically significant
Phobias
Fears of objects or events
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
- Obsessive thoughts (dirt, germs)
- compulsive behaviors (aimed to reduce anxiety, ex: checking locks, hand washing)
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Symptoms: Flashbacks, nightmares, jumpiness, insomnia, inattention, dissociation
Why anxiety?
- Learned or conditioned (ex. in a car crash, experience anxiety when in a car)
- Natural selection (Ex: it is adaptive to fear rats)
- The brain; fear circuits can be created in the amygdala
Schizophrenia
Psychotic illness in that the sufferer experiences a break from consensual reality, this break usually occurs in the late teens or early twenties
Schizophrenia Delusions
Thought content usually not based on reality and are often paranoid. ex: my neighbors can hear my thoughts, the tv or radio is talking directly to me
Schizophrenia Disordered thoughts
Speech disturbances, ex: word salad, clans associations, very literate (concreteness, “where did everyone go? I thought I was right here)
Schizophrenia Perpetual Disturbances
- Auditory Hallucinations, command
- Visual Hallucinations
- Rarely olfactory (smell) hallucinations
Schizophrenia disturbances in Mood/affect
- Flat affect
- Inappropriate affect
- Hostility if paranoid
Schizophrenia motor disturbances
- Catatonia (do not move)
- Thought of to come from families that are really controlling
Causes for schizophrenia
- may be caused by an access of dopamine, antipsychotic medications dopamine reception
- viral infections during pregnancy may predispose to schizophrenia
- many schiz. conceived in the winter
- overall population 1 in 10
- identical twin has schiz. chances are 1 in 2, even if raised in a diff. family
