week 12 - psychological disorders

Question 1

what is anxiety and anxiety disorder?? is all anxiety considered bad?

Answer 1

anxiety is a feeling of distress of fear/uncertainties in the future
anxeity disorder: type of mental disorder that is characteristised by constant panic, anxiety and stress
- normal anxiety can actually prepare us for potential stressors and allow us to be proactive when it comes to exams etc..
- abnormal anxiety is bad and can cause confusion, panic , fatigue that ruin performance

Question 2

what are the three different types of disorders within anxiety?

Answer 2

generalised anxiety disorder: chronic and persistant anxiety that lasts for at least 6 months where person experiences anxiety in everyday activities (school, work, meeting with friends)
panic disorder: ppl experience, infrequent and sudden periods of intense terror
phobia: persistant and irrational fear of an object/situation

Question 3

what are the symptoms of the 3 disorder/types of anxeity?

Answer 3

GAD: fatigue, insomnia, tremour, nausea

Question 4

what are the theoretical conceptualisation of axiety disorders within the psychodynamic, cognitive and biological persective?

Answer 4

psychodyamic: repressed urges
cognitive: reinforcement/irrational thinking, person has been conditioned to his/her particular enviroment
biological: changes in neural pathways

Question 5

what is OCD? and what is it characteristied by?

Answer 5

obsession: unwanted/irrational thoughts beliefs/ ideas
complusion: intentional behaviours/rituals performed as a result of the obsession
levels of distress in OCD increase if they are unable to perform their compulsion

Question 6

what is a ritual?

Answer 6

ritual is some task perfomed by a person with OCD which temporaily reduced their levels of distress and provides releif

Question 7

how can the development of anxeity disorder be explained by the etiology?

Answer 7

goverened by nature and nurture

- genetics, early experiences, stress

Question 8

criteria for major depressive disorder?

Answer 8

1. at least 1 of the two symtoms of: loss of interest to pleasurable things or persistant sad mood
2. at least 3-4 of following symtpoms: loss appetite, sleeping too much or insomnia, fatique, movement issues trouble concentration , recurring thoughts death/suicide
   to be diagnosed with MDD - must have 5 symptoms
3. these symptoms must be persistant for at least 2 weeks
4. no manic epiosodes - no feelings of sudden euphoria, excietment
5. symptoms cause distress/impairment
   6, symptoms are not cuased by psyphical impairment and or bereavement

Question 9

what is the theoretical conceptualisations of MDD?

Answer 9

psychodynamic: repressed angry thoughts to authority figures
cognititve: learned helpless ness, disorientated thinking
bioligical: dysfunction of neurotrasmitters

Question 10

what is bipolar disorder?

Answer 10

it is a mood disorder that is characterised by alternating periods of manic and depression

Question 11

does mania always imply in the person being happy/eurphoric? what the symptoms of manic disorder?

Answer 11

No - someone with mania can be very hostile and irritible
symptoms: 1. grandiose plans (out of the blue plans like running the marathon without training, starting a buisness with no real plan) 2. racing speech 3. easily distracted 4. racing thoughts 5. decrease in sleep 6. inflated self esteem (im the queen of the world)

Question 12

what is the difference between bipolar disorder 1 and 2

Answer 12

bipolar 1 and 2 have simialr depression symptoms (feeling sad/low, change in sleep/appetite, fatigue, loss of interet)
bipolar 1 and 2 have different manic episodes: bipolar 1 manic is severe and very noticible (even poeple who dont know the person notice it) biopolar 2 manic episodes are less severe (hypomania) only noticed by people who are close to the person

Question 13

what is cyclothymia? is it considered a bipolar disorder? what are the specific manic episdes experiences by people with cyclothymia called?

Answer 13

Cyclothymia is not considered a bipolar disorder 1 or 2. Althought the indivisual experiences manic and depressive episodes the highs are not as high and lows are not as low when compared to biopolar disorders. Cycloyhymia people experience Hypomania episodes (hypo meaning low or below)

Question 14

what are the different types of approaches to therapy? what is the main focus for each of these approaches?

Answer 14

psychodynamic - focusses on digging into the persons past experiences to fix their problem/disorder
cognitive-behavioural: based on cognitive and behavioural approaches in psychology
humanistic therapies, group/family therapy, biological treatments

Question 15

What are the three techniques usedi in psychodynamic therapty>

Answer 15

free association - asking the client to freely talk about things that comes to mind
example of FA: martha continues to talk about things about her father (what he wore - cowboy hat, tie, smoking), after multiple sessions you find out that father left martha at a young age and was never attentive to her - this can explain her choice in men who do not care for her -> allows therpist to help martha make better choices
, hyponosis, and dream interpretatiion
dream association: try to determine what symbolic meaning a dream that the clinent has had
example of DA: martha has a dream of her and her boyf happily inlove in space -> could mean that she wants to escape reality as it is keeping the two from being around eachother all the time (boyf has work everyday, school work/still thinking about his ex)
Catharsis/hypnosis association:
catharsis: bringing repressed emotions/experiences to the surface in order to be dealt with (hyponosis). It is not something that can be done quickly, and usually person experiences catharsis over months/years of seeing the therapist

Question 16

what is transference relationship that can occur during therapy sessions?

Answer 16

when the clinent subconciously assigns feelings and attitudes associated to their past with someone or something in present
Example: Bob goes to therapy and sees that his therapist looks alot like his dad/talks like his dad -> bob feels like the therpist is judging him, scolding him -> bob feels like he cannot be himself and chooses his words very carefully
- it is a transference of feelings towards one person/something to another person/something

Question 17

is transference good or bad or both? Why?

Answer 17

transference can be both good/bad

good: can strengthen the relationship between the clinent and the therapist - if therpaist resembles someone that the client trusts (bestfriend) -> client may be inclined to trust the therapist more
bad: clinent associates therapist to someone they feel negative towards -> fails to disclose information/holds back

Question 18

what is transference interpretation and how can it help the client?

Answer 18

Transference interpretation is when the therapist identifies the transference within the client and try to identify the root cause of it

Question 19

what are the two approaches in psychodynamic therpay?

Answer 19

psychoanalysis- clinent lies on couch behind therpaist and therapist tells them to describe anything and everything they are thinking (free association)
psydyanmic psychotherapy - face to face, and is more goal oriented than psychotherapy

Question 20

what are the behavioural and cognitive aspects in CBT?

Answer 20

behavioural: based on the fact that behaviour is learned/unlearned (classical and operant conditioning)
cognitive: changing dysfunctional thoughts (automatic thoughts) and challenging conginitive distortions. Believes that problems do not arise from an event but the meaning that the indivisual associates with that event.

Question 21

what is systematic disensititation, exposure and flooding techniques used in the behavioural aspect of CBT?

Answer 21

systematic desentitiaton: when the clinent associated a neutral stimulus to a emotion

example: pairs an event that causes anxiety with an emotion like relaxation
exposure: patient is exposed to a fear-inducing stimulus and therapist and clinent devise a plan of action in overcoming the fear and the level of exposure he/she will have during treatment

Question 22

what are the operant conditioning side of behavioural therapy based on? what are the modelling and actitivty schedualing techniques used for?

Answer 22

• associate reward and punishment to wanted and unwated behaviours -> aim for wanted behaviours to become more frequent
• activity schedualing: schedualing activities clinent has enjoyed in the past that has brought positive feelings/achievement to the client
• modelling: learning appropriete responses to behaviour by observing others perform responses to the same behaviour

Question 23

what does the cognitive side of CBT focus on?

Answer 23

eliminating psychological distress - such as dysfunctional thought patterns and cognitive dissonance
- therory focusses on changing a way somebody thinks about an event as it is thought to improve outcomes as problems are caused by errors in reasoning

Question 24

what is cognitive dissonace and dysfunctional thought patterns?

Answer 24

cognitive dissonace is when indivisuals perceive an event/situations/people in a negative and biased way in whcih results in psychological distress.

Question 25

what is the focus for humanistic therapy?

Answer 25

• humanistic theory focusses on the client being responsible for his/her changes in behaviour/action
• HT refers to ppl therapy as clients NOT patients
• therapist is seen more of a friend to the client and is there not to be authoritative but as support for the client

Question 26

what is group therapy? what is self-help therapy?

Answer 26

• group therapy focusses on multiple ppl coming together and discuss about their problamatic disorders
• self-help therapy is when an people who are going through the same problems meet up and discuss about their issues

Question 27

how does family therapy work?

Answer 27

• family therapy focusses on changing and improving maldaptive family patterns and solve dysfunctional relationship within members of family
• may use multiple theraputic approaches (humanistic, behavioural-cognitive therapy)

Question 28

Do all therapists just use one approach when treating indivisuals? if not, what are the two approaches they take?

Answer 28

• large proportion of psychologists now use eclectric and intergrative therapy approaches
• eclectric: when therapist chooses different techniques from different approaches and combines them to treat the patient best suiting his/her needs
• integrative: when therapist chooses different approaches and fuses them together

Question 29

what is schizophrenia?

Answer 29

• psychotic disorder were patients loose touch with reality

- is it NOT split personality disorder

Question 30

what is positive and negative schizophrenia?

Answer 30

positive: where indivisual experiences more than the expected amount of symptoms - hearing voices in your head, dellusions, disordered thoughts of speech
negative: symptoms that make the patients experience less than other poeples (blunted affect - emotions that dont run the full range) (anhedonia - inability to experience pleasure) lack of motivation, social withdrawl,

Question 31

Causes of schizophrenia?

Answer 31

• monozygotic twins - if one twin has it then other twin more suceptible in having schizophrenia
• fraternal twins are less likely than monozygotic

Question 32

what do we mean by psychopathology?

Answer 32

• refers to the problamatic thoughts feelings and behaviour that disrupt a persons wellbeing