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Psychological Disorders Flashcards

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1
Q

what is the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5)?

A

5th edition, a way to classify mental disorders.

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2
Q

DSM-5 (1): Anxiety Disorders

What is anxiety? what are its general symptoms?

A

anxiety is an emotional state of unpleasant arousal: symptoms of anxiety include intense, uncontrollable distress which impairs normal function

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3
Q

DSM-5 (1): Anxiety Disorders

What is panic disorder?

A

panic disorder is assigned to someone who has had at least one panic attack and is in fear of having another.

Panic attacks are rapid onsets of intense anxiety which include rapid breathing, sweating, faintness, chest pain. This can often be confused with a heart attack

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4
Q

DSM-5 (1): Anxiety Disorders

What is generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)

A

in contrast to panic disorder, GAD is more of a constant low level of anxiety which is noted by restlessness, sleep issues, poor concentration

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5
Q

DSM-5 (1): Anxiety Disorders

What are specific phobia and social phobia (aka social anxiety disorder)

A

specific phobia is an irrational fear of an object or situation which induces general anxiety or a panic attack. This can be situational, environmental, blood-induced, or animal-induced

Social anxiety: is the irrational, constant fear of being embarrassed

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6
Q

DSM-5 (2): Obsessive compulsive disorder

what is an obsession? What is a compulsion?

A

obsessions are repeated, intrusive thoughts and impulses that cause anxiety within an individual. ‘

Compulsions are specific actions carried out by a person typically to reduce the obsession

e.g. a germaphobe will repeatedly clean their hands due to the obsession that they may be contaminated

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7
Q

DSM-5 (3): Trauma and stress disorders

What it PTSD?

A

post-traumatic-stress-disorder arise after a person experiences a traumatic event. Often these people re-live the experience through dreams and flash-backs and even have physiological arousal associated with it.

These people are hypervigalent: high sense of physiological arousal

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8
Q

DSM-5 (3): Trauma and stress disorders
how long must a person be hypervigalent with flashbacks until they are considered PTSD? If it has not been long enough what is the name of the disorder?

A

for PTSD - 1 month

anything less is considered acute stress disorder

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9
Q

DSM-5 (3): Trauma and stress disorders

what is adjustment disorder?

A

constant stress and feelings of anxiety due to a stressor not a trauma. Once the stressor has been removed the disorder symptoms subside within 6 months. (acute stress disorder may last very little but it is still from a traumatic event)

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10
Q

DSM-5 (4): somatic symptom disorders

what is a somatic symptom disorder?

A

a disorder in which an individual feels distress and physiological problems with physical symptoms which mimic physiological disease but are not caused by it at all.

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11
Q

DSM-5 (4): somatic symptom disorders

what is somatic symptom disorder?

A

a patient has at least one somatic issue which persistently concerns them. Diagnosis requires decreased functioning due to anxiety of the somatic problem

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12
Q

DSM-5 (4): somatic symptom disorders

what is illness anxiety disorder?

A

aka hypochondria

a person has an excessive preoccupation with the idea of being ill/sick, and has the constant desire to find treatment. Often the somatic aspects are minimal or non-existant (i.e. there are minute to no real physical symptoms)

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13
Q

DSM-5 (4): somatic symptom disorders

conversion disorder?

A

conversion disorder is when someone experiences a change in sensory or motor function that is not due to a physiological cause.
tremors, difficulty eating.

essentially the anxiety / trauma a person feels gets “converted” into physiological symptoms

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14
Q

DSM-5 (4): somatic symptom disorders

what is Factitious disorder imposed on self (aka Munchhausen syndrome)

A

when a person fabricates an illness and then further fabricates symptoms and evidence of that illness which may include harming themselves to seek medical attention.

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15
Q

DSM-5 (4): somatic symptom disorders

What is Factitious disorder imposed on another ( aka Munchhausen by proxy)

A

when someone inflicts physiological and psychological symptoms on another and presents the person as being ill (often a child)

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16
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

what is ^

A

AKA manic depression

it is when people experience cyclic episodes of moods including highs (mania) and lows (depression)

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17
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

what is a manic episode?

A

for at least one week, a person experiences an overwhelming amount of energy which causes abnormal euphoric, unrestrained or irritable mood.

it is marked by an increase in goal-directed activity or (if the person has no means to engage in the goal) the energy is expelled onto other activities

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18
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

what is psychomotor agitation?

A

During a manic episode if the person channels their energy onto an activity unrelated to goal-orientation (like searching through Facebook for hours)

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19
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

what is a mixed episode?

A

when for at least one week, an individual has experienced both the symptoms of major depression and mania almost every day in that week.

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20
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

What is Bipolar 1 disorder

A

by definition: someone is bipolar 1 if they have experienced a manic or mixed episode

note: these episodes cannot have arised from anti-depressant drugs. they are then considered side effects

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21
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

What is a hypomanic episode?

A

when a person feels for at least 4 days abnormal euphoria or irritability. This person must feel at least a few manic symptoms but to a lesser extent which usually does not effect psychosis.

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22
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

what is major depressive episode?

A

when a person feels very low, uninterested, un-aroused nearly every day for two weeks

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23
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

what is Bipolar 2 disorder?

A

When a person has experienced BOTH a hypomanic episode and a major depressive episode

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24
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

How does bi-polar disorder 1 and 2 differ?

A

Bipolar 1 requires the person to have had a manic episode OR mixed episode

Bipolar 2 requires the person to have had a major depressive episode AND a hypomanic episode

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25
Q

why is dysthymia?

A

aka persistent depressive disorder. This disorder is not classified as a bipolar disorder but does feature mood swings. It is not considered an episode though

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26
Q

DSM-5 (5): Bipolar disorders

What is cyclothymic disorder

A

essentially bipolar disorder 1 or 2 with much milder symptoms and has persisted for 2 years or more

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27
Q

DSM-5 (6): depressive disorders

What is Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

A

a person has suffered from one or more major depressive episodes. This person is consistently below baseline emotional state. 10% of MDD people attempt suicide

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28
Q

DSM-5 (6): depressive disorders

What is persistent depressive disorder (PDD)

A

Aka dysthymia
much less severe then MDD but typically more chronic (i.e. persistent)
people with PDD have not had a major depressive episode and they have had PDD symptoms for at least 2 years (to be diagnosed it)

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29
Q

DSM-5 (6): depressive disorders

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder?

A

symptoms are similar to MDD but it occurs during menstruation.
unique symptoms include: on-edge, muscle and joint pain, specific food cravings

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30
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

what is schizophrenia

A

a person has experienced delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking and negative symptoms
schizophrenia is essentially being split from reality

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31
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

what is avolition and agolia?

A

avolition –> lack of motivation
agolia –> decreased speech

both negative symptoms of schizophrenia

32
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

What is Delusional disorder?

A

when someone obtains a false belief and denies counter-evidence of that belief

33
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

delusional disorders: erotomania, grandiosity, and persecution

A
  1. erotomania: belief someone is in-love with you
  2. grandiosity: belief you have some special talent
  3. persecution: belief someone is following you or harassing you
34
Q

what is the difference between positive and negative symptoms?

A

+ -> something appears e.g. hallucinations, disorganized behaviour)
- –> when something disappears or decreases (alogia and avolition)

35
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

what is brief psychotic disorder

A

schizophrenia of the shortest duration (1 month max)

when a person experiences only positive (no negative) symptoms of schizophrenia

36
Q

what is a hallucination

A

false sensory perception during consciousness
note: true hallucinations occur when there is no cue sensory stimuli
a misperception is cue’d by a real stimuli which is interpreted incorrectly

37
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

what is Schizophreniform disorder

A

middle of the schizophrenia spectrum

  • at least on positive and one negative symptom
  • lasts between 1 - 6 months
38
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

what is end of spectrum schizophrenia?

A

positive and negative symptoms for over 6 months

39
Q

DSM-5 (7): schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders

What is schizoaffective disorder?

A

both the symptoms of schizophrenia and major depressive disorder are apparent for at least one month.

40
Q

What is the difference between major depressive disorder “with psychotic symptoms” and schizoaffective disorder?

A

MDD with symptoms implies psychosis occurs during mood episodes.

Schizoaffective disorder implies that the hallucinations and delusions occur at times in absence of moos symptoms.

41
Q

DSM-5 (8) Dissociative disorders

What is a dissociative experience?

A

when a person becomes momentarily separated from their consciousness. In dissociative occurrences, someone looses grasp of their emotion, thoughts, perceptions, and memories. It is often a form of avoidance to stay away from a traumatic memory that is too difficult to bear in our consciousness.

42
Q

DSM-5 (8) Dissociative disorders

What is Dissociative Identity Disorder?

A

aka multiple personality disorder: When someone alternates between 2 or more states / identities only one of which is seen by other people. This is a dissociative disorder in which different synapses control the different states creating alternating minds.

43
Q

DSM-5 (8) Dissociative disorders

dissociative amnesia

A

when a person has at least one episode of forgetting important, personal information creating gaps within their memory. they often wonder during this episode

localized - what is forgotten is specific to a moment in time
generalized - whole life is forgotten
selective - certain things are forgotten in a moment in time

44
Q

what is a dissociative fugue?

A

the act of wandering and “taking a journey” during a dissociative episode (amnesia)

45
Q

DSM-5 (8) Dissociative disorders

What is depersonalization and derealization disorders?

A

depersonalization -> a person frequently has an out of body experience in which they feel as though they are cut off from their own mental processes

derealization –> a person distorts reality to no longer believe real things exist.

in both cases the person is aware that their thoughts are not accurate. Therefore the disorder + the knowledge of it gives the person anxiety.

46
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster A
Paranoid personality disorder?

A

the individual mistrusts other people and their actions. they feel as though people are always out to get them.

47
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster A
Schizoid disorder?

A

the person is a loner with no intimate relationships. the are unaffected emotionally

48
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster A
Schizotypal disorder

A

this person has magical or paranoid thinking. They have odd speech and behaviour. they have no confidants other than close relatives

49
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster B
antisocial disorder

A

since the age of 10 the person has had serious behavioural problems such as stealing, lying, being aggressive.
since the age of 15 the person disregards the rights of others, has no remorse, and no regard for safety
common in incarcerated men

50
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster B
borderline disorder?

A

the person has moments where they loose control over their behaviour, mood, and image of their self. They are often impulsive and reckless. They often have extreme mood swings and poor relationships

51
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster B
What is histrionic disorder?

A

the person craves to be the centre of attention and seeks to attract attention in multiple ways.

52
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster B
Narcissistic disorder?

A

the person feels very self-important. This coincides with the delusional disorder grandiosity in which one believes they have a special talent. In narcissistic disorder the person lacks empathy and often feels superior to others.

53
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster C
Avoidant personality Disorder?

A

This person constantly feels inferior and inadequate. This person is pre-occupied with fears of criticism and will only do something if guaranteed they will be liked.

54
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster C
Dependent personality disorder?

A

this person has the irrational fear that they cannot do anything on their own. They cannot make decisions or take on responsibility.
They are often taken advantage of because they will do anything for comfort and nurture in return

55
Q

DSM-5 (9): Personality Disorders
cluster C
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder?

A

This person is a perfectionist, stubborn, need for control type personality. These people only do things their way and focus on themselves a lot.

56
Q

what are eating disorders?

A

disruptive emotional and behavioural patterns around feeding that negatively impact someone. E.g. anorexia

57
Q

what are neurocognitive disorders?

A

cognitive abnormalities or a general decline in memory

58
Q

what are sleep-wake disorders?

A

problems with sleep. E.g. narcolepsy, insomnia, parasomnia’s etc

59
Q

what is the stress-diathesis theory of schizophrenia ?

A

schizophrenia is pre-disposed genetically but stressors actually elicit it’s symptoms

60
Q

What is the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia? Explain Schizophrenia pos and neg symptoms

A

With people who have schizophrenia, their dopamine pathways are hyperactive. Additionally, schizophrenics have hyperactive temporal lobes! This explains their positive symptoms such as hallucinations (especially auditory ones)

there is also evidence that schizophrenics have hypo-active frontal lobes which explains their negative symptoms such as flat affect (they loose emotion / personality), impaired speech, etc.

61
Q

What is dementia?

A

dementia is the common term for neurocognitive disorder in the DSM-5. dementia is the rapid loss of cognitive ability.

62
Q

what is the most common form of dementia? what is retrograde and anterograde amnesia?

A

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia.
Anterograde amnesia –> inability to form new memories
Retrograde amnesia –> the loss of memory starting from recent memories and moving to older ones (as time goes by)

63
Q

What are neuritic plaques?

A

neuritic plaques are clumps of proteins one of which being neurofibrillary tangles which cause alzheimer’s disease. These plaques eventually cause cell death to neurons.

64
Q

what is Parkinson’s Disease? What is given to treat it?

A

Parkinson’s disease is characterized by death to dopamine producing cells in the basal ganglia and substantia nigra. This is a movement disorder which causes tremors, difficult speech, slow movement.

it is treated by giving the patient L-Dopa: a dopamine precursor which can cross the BBB

65
Q

what are the 4 situations where attitude is a good predictors of behaviour?

A
  1. When social influences are minimzed
  2. when you evaluate broad behaviour not specific
  3. when you evaluate specific attitude not broad
  4. when you provide people with self-reflection to reduce impulsiveness. (self-aware people behave upon their morals more)
66
Q

What is the principle of aggregation?

A

This refers to the situation in which we must evaluate people on their broad behaviours not their specific ones.
Attitude affects a persons aggregate / average behaviour not any specific / impulsive ones

67
Q

typically attitude influences behaviour. How can behaviours influence attitude? (3)

A
  1. during role play
  2. during public speech
  3. justification of effort
68
Q

Explain how role play allows behaviour to affect attitude

A

When people now they must live up to a given role, they behave in character. As time goes on they adopt attiutudes that coincide with their role and how that role affects their behavioiur.

an example of this is a solider who at first is ambivalent toward the enemy. After a month, the same guy may hate the enemy and call them evil.

69
Q

who was Philip Zimbardo?

A

He created an experiment in Stanford called the prisoner study. He made half his class “prisoners” and the other half “ guards “ and found that after a few days, the students had truly adopted the attitudes of their roles.

70
Q

Explain how public declaration affects attitude.

A

If someone says something enough or in an important situation, they may eventually believe what they have said.

for example, if a politician states something that she is ambivalent toward to please her people, eventually she may accommodate her peoples attitude toward the event due to her public declarations

71
Q

Explain justification of effort and how it affects attitude

A

This is when someone changes their attitude to coincide with their behaviour. In order to justify effort already put into something, people orientate their attitudes towards it as if it must be important

72
Q

What is the foot in the door technique?

A

this is an example of taking advantage of effort justification.
Someone will ask for a very small favour and work their way up to bigger favours (sign a petition, place a lawn sign, donate money)
People justify their effort of the smaller things to carry out the bigger things

73
Q

What is cognitive dissonance theory?

A

when someone holds two contradictory beliefs or if their attitudes do not match their behaviour they have built up tension which must be alleviated.

If there is not sufficient justification for an action or a thought, people will change their views to make up for a lack of justification

74
Q

explain how cognitive dissonance explains attitudes after big decisions? (woman 2 men example)

A

if a woman must choose between an exciting but not reliable man vs. a subdued but reliable man, regardless of what she chooses she will not have sufficient justification to choose either.

As a result, if she chooses the exciting man, she will change her attitude towards relationships (i.e. being spontaneous is more important then reliable)

75
Q

what is catatonic schizophrenia?

A

when only negative symptoms are present.

The opposite is brief psychotic disorder in which only positive symptoms are present

MCAT psych / soc (9 decks)

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