Psychopathology: OCD Flashcards
What are the behavioural characteristics of OCD?
- compulsions - repetitive behaviours to reduce anxiety, 10% of patients with OCD only have compulsions
- Avoidance - reduce anxiety by keeping away from triggers (e.g. could be avoiding regular situations and self-isolating)
What are the emotional characteristics of OCD?
- anxiety and distress - unpleasant emotional experiences as anxiety accompanies obsession, can be very overwhelming
- Accompanying depression - anxiety means low mood and lack of employment, leading to isolation and depression, compulsions bring temporary relief, but not permanent
- Guilt and disgust - irrational guilt over a minor issue or for things out of your control which is directed towards oneself or something external, bringing negative emotions
What are the cognitive characteristics of OCD?
- obsessive thoughts - 90% of OCD patients suffer with this. Recurring intrusive thoughts that makes compulsive behaviours to stop the thoughts - vary from person to person but always unpleasant
- Cognitive dealing strategies - adopt coping strategies to manage anxiety with distractions from everyday life, which are disruptive
- Excessive anxiety - Awareness that thoughts and behaviour are irrational, but they cannot get rid of them. They experience catastrophic thoughts and are hyper-vigilant of their obsessions - increasing anxiety.
What’s the genetic biological approach into explaining OCD - Candiate genes?
Researchers have identified specific genes which create a vulnerability for OCD, called Candidate genes.
- Serotonin Genes are implicated in the transmission of serotonin across synapses
- Dopamine Genes are implicated in OCD also. Both Dopamine and Serotonin are neurotransmitters that have a role in regulating mood.
What’s the genetic approach to explaining OCD - Polygenic genes and types of OCD?
OCD is not caused by one single genes but several genes are involved. This means it is polygenic.
- Evidence has been found that there are up to 230 genes involved in OCD.
—> One group of genes may cause OCD in one person but another group of genes may cause the disorder in another person. There is evidence that suggests different types of OCD may be the result of particular genetic variations, such as hoarding disorder.
What’s some support for genetic explanations of OCD?
- there is some evidence that certain people are more vulnerable than others.
—> Newstadt reviewed cases and found 68% of MZ twins both have OCD and 31% of DZ twins. This shows the role of genes as MZ twins have 100% same genes, whereas DZ have 50%. So high congruence in MZ twins show OCD is caused by genetic make-up rather than the environment.
What are some weaknesses to genetic explainations for OCD?
Too many candidate genes - psychologists are less successful pinning down the exact genes involved in the development of OCD. Each genetic variation found increases the possibility of OCD and therefore there are too many genes to create a specific explanation for OCD development - means its difficult to tackle so the genetic explanation has little practical applications to help cure and cope with the illness.
- environmental factors may be influential
What is the neural biological approach into explaining OCD - serotonin and dopamine?
- The role of neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine - levels associated with abnormal transmission of mood-related info/ obsessive thoughts.
—> serotonin: regulates mood, relays info from one neuron to another. Low serotonin means normal transmission of mood doesn’t happen - less serotonin in the brain means mood is effected and therefore obsessive thoughts develop
What do PET scans show about serotonin in the brain?
PET scans show low levels of serotonin activity in the brains of OCD patients and drugs that increase serotonin activity reduced the symptoms of OCD.
What have neuroimaging techniques enabled?
researchers to study the brain in detail to identify normal brain patterns -this therefore allows for comparisons with abnormal patterns.
What is the basal ganglia responsible for?
responsible for innate psychomotor functions. Rapaport and Wise proposed the hypersensitivity of the basal ganglia gives a rise to the repetitive motor behaviours seen in OCD (e.g. repetitive washing/cleaning/checking)
Why is the Orbitis Frontal Cortex (OFC) and Thalamus involved in OCD?
the OFC is the ‘worry circuit’ - the caudate nucleus-thalamus loop - inability to filter small worries in OCD so worry circuit is overactive- its also involved in decision making. This would result in increased anxiety and increased planning to avoid anxiety.
An overactive thalamus would result in an increased motivation to clean or check for safety. If the thalamus was overactive the OFC would become overactive as a result.
what do PET scans also show about the Orbital frontal cortex?
PET scans also show high levels of activity in the orbital frontal cortex which is associated with higher thought processes and sensory info. This is affected by impulses, therefore in OCD they have difficulty switching off the impulses, so they turn into obsessions, resulting in compulsive behaviour.
How does Zohar support neural explanations?
He gave mCPP (a drug that reduces serotonin levels) to 12 OCD patients and 21 non-OCD patients. Found that the symptoms of OCD patients were significantly enhanced (made worse). This supports the idea that sufferers condition was related to abnormal levels of serotonin.
What’s more support for levels of serotonin affecting OCD?
Hu (2006) compared serotonin activity in 169 OCD patients and compared 253 non-OCD patients. Found that serotonin levels were lower in the OCD patients, which supports the idea that low levels of serotonin are associated with OCD.
