unit 4 - psychological disorders and treatment chapters 15 and 16 Flashcards
More psychologists are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorder than in any other endeavour, and those tasks are probably the most important psychologists face.
The impact on people with a psychological disorder comes both from the disease itself and from the stigma associated with disorder.
A psychological disorder is an ongoing dysfunctional pattern of thought, emotion, and behaviour that causes significant distress and that is considered deviant in that person’s culture or society.
According to the bio-psycho-social model, psychological disorders have biological, psychological, and social causes.
It is difficult to diagnose psychological disorders, although the DSM provides guidelines. The DSM is frequently revised, taking into consideration new knowledge as well as changes in cultural norms about disorder.
The causes of mental illness have historically been a source of mystery and conjecture.
Current theories agree that both biological and environmental factors contribute to mental illness.
The diagnosis of mental illness in North America is currently guided by the DSM-5.
Anxiety is a natural part of life, but too much anxiety can be debilitating. Every year millions of people suffer from anxiety disorders.
People who suffer from generalized anxiety disorder experience anxiety, as well as a variety of physical symptoms.
Panic disorder involves the experience of panic attacks, including shortness of breath, heart palpitations, trembling, and dizziness.
Phobias are specific fears of a certain object, situation, or activity. Phobias are characterized by their specificity and their irrationality.
A common phobia is social phobia, which is extreme shyness around people or discomfort in social situations.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is diagnosed when a person’s repetitive thoughts are so disturbing and their compulsive behaviours so time consuming that they cause distress and significant disruption in a person’s everyday life.
People who have survived a terrible ordeal — such as combat, torture, rape, imprisonment, abuse, natural disasters, or the death of someone close to them — may develop PTSD.
Both nature and nurture contribute to the development of anxiety disorders.
The DSM-5 defines dissociation as “a disruption and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control and behavior” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 291).
Dissociative disorders include dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, depersonalization or derealization disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.
Dissociative identity disorder used to be thought of as multiple personality disorder and was popularized in books and movies. The disorder has always been controversial, with some believing that most cases are faked.
The most widely held perspective on dissociative symptoms is that they reflect a defensive response to highly aversive events, mostly trauma during childhood.
Mood is the positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences.
Major depressive disorder is characterized by extreme feelings of sadness and hopelessness, coupled with other behavioural symptoms.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by swings in mood from mania to sadness and hopelessness, and back again, with periods of near-normal moods in between.
Mood disorders are caused by the interplay among biological, psychological, and social variables.
Mood disorders are significant risk factors for suicide.
Schizophrenia is a serious psychological disorder marked by delusions, hallucinations, and loss of contact with reality.
Schizophrenia is accompanied by a variety of symptoms, but not all patients have all of them.
Because the schizophrenic patient has lost contact with reality, we say that they are experiencing psychosis.
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, derailment, disorganized behaviour, inappropriate affect, and catatonia.
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia include social withdrawal, poor hygiene and grooming, poor problem-solving abilities, and a distorted sense of time.
Cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia include difficulty comprehending and using information and problems maintaining focus.
There is no single cause of schizophrenia. Rather, there are a variety of biological and environmental risk factors that interact in a complex way to increase the likelihood that someone might develop schizophrenia.
A personality disorder is a disorder characterized by inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, or relating to others that causes problems in personal, social, and work situations.
Personality disorders are categorized into three clusters, characterized by odd or eccentric behaviour, dramatic or erratic behaviour, and anxious or inhibited behaviour.
Although they are considered as separate disorders, the personality disorders are essentially milder versions of more severe Axis I disorders.
Borderline personality disorder is a prolonged disturbance of personality accompanied by mood swings, unstable personal relationships, and identity problems, and it is often associated with suicide.
Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a disregard of others’ rights and a tendency to violate those rights without being concerned about doing so.
Care providers with a variety of training, education, and experience provide help for mental disorders and psychological distress.
Psychoanalysis is based on the principles of Freudian and neo-Freudian personality theories. The goal is to explore the unconscious dynamics of personality.
Humanist therapy, derived from the personality theory of Carl Rogers, is based on the idea that people experience psychological problems when they are burdened by limits and expectations placed on them by themselves and others. Its focus is on helping people reach their life goals.
Behaviour therapy applies the principles of classical and operant conditioning, as well as observational learning, to the elimination of maladaptive behaviours and their replacement with more adaptive responses.
Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck developed cognitive-based therapies to help clients stop negative thoughts and replace them with more objective thoughts.
Mindfulness approaches to therapy emphasize self-regulation of attention and orientation toward the present moment.
Eclectic therapy is the most common approach to treatment. In eclectic therapy, the therapist uses whatever treatment approaches seem most likely to be effective for the client.
Psychoactive drugs are commonly used in the treatment of mental disorders.
All psychoactive drugs have side effects.
Electroconvulsive therapy is a controversial procedure used to treat severe depression, in which electric currents are passed through the brain, deliberately triggering a brief seizure.
A newer method of brain stimulation is transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is a noninvasive procedure that employs a pulsing magnetic coil to electrically stimulate the brain.
Certain types of food in the stomach can alter the rate of drug absorption, and other foods can also alter the rate of drug metabolism.
Treating children and adolescents with psychoactive drugs is controversial.
Group therapy is psychotherapy in which clients receive psychological treatment together with others. A professionally trained therapist guides the group. Types of group therapy include couples therapy and family therapy.
Self-help groups have been used to help individuals cope with many types of disorder.
The goal of community health service programs is to act during childhood or early adolescence with the hope that interventions might prevent disorders from appearing or keep existing disorders from expanding. The prevention provided can be primary, secondary, or tertiary.
Outcome research is designed to differentiate the effects of a treatment from natural improvement, nonspecific treatment effects, and placebo effects.
Meta-analysis is used to integrate and draw conclusions about studies.
Research shows that getting psychological therapy is better at reducing disorder than not getting it, but many of the results are due to nonspecific effects. All good therapies give people hope and help them think more carefully about themselves and about their relationships with others.
Biomedical treatments are effective, at least in the short term, but overall they are less effective than psychotherapy.
One problem with drug therapies is that although they provide temporary relief, they do not treat the underlying cause of the disorder.
Federally funded community mental health service programs are effective, but their preventive effects may in many cases be minor
