Week 2 Flashcards
How does neuron works?
action potentials are all-or-none; a neuron either fires or it doesn’t
Excitatory signals
stimulate the brain (causing surrounding neurons to fire) (eg: GABA, norepinephrine)
Inhibitory signals
calm the brain (prevent surrounding neurons to fire) (eg: glutamate, serotonin)
Function of the cerebellum
speech, vision, hearing, movement, sensation, and intelligence
Function of the limbic system
motivation, emotional regulation, and long-term memory
amygdala
basic emotions like fear and anger, excessive -> depression
hippocampus
memory, connected with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia
orbitofrontal cortex
decision-making
What is an immune system?
The immune system is the system of cells and biological processes used to fight off pathogens (foreign bodies that cause disease, such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, and cancer cells)
What is general paresis?
It is a syndrome in which individuals show progressive decline in mental functioning, which caused by syphilis virus
What are some strengths of biological perspectives?
- Mental phenomena explained in terms of biological processes.
- Scientific: The biological perspective has generated an enormous amount of research into the relationship between physical and mental functioning.
- Development of psychiatric drugs and other biological interventions
What are some criticisms of biological perspectives?
- Reductionistic: complex psychological phenomena cannot be explained in purely biological terms.
- Everyday problems become “medicalized.”
- Overreliance on psychiatric drugs.
Dominant alleles
mainly influence how particular characteristics genetically unfold
recessive alleles
influence development when a person inherits two of them (only display in rare circumstances)
How do genes work?
Genes provide complex instructions that cells use to manufacture proteins
How does genes and environmental factors result in disorder?
Only when environmental conditions and multiple gene expression align does a psychological problem such as schizophrenia or autism result
What is it like to see from evolutionary perspectives?
Evolutionary theory believe an organism survives and reproduces depends on organism’s fitness, which reflects how well it adapts to the environmentEvolutionary theory believe an organism survives and reproduces depends on organism’s fitness, which reflects how well it adapts to the environment
According to the behavioral perspectives, what mainly shapes abnormalities?
Environmental conditioning
Who developed classical conditioning? Who did they draw major inspiration from in doing so?
John Watson / Ivan Pavlov
In Pavlov’s experiment, how would the salivation of the dog even in the absence of the food be classified?
Conditioned Response
In one of his experiment, John Watson conditioned a baby into fearing a white rat by associating it with a loud noise. What is the name of the baby?
Little Albert
Who is most often associated with operant conditioning?
B.F.Skiiner
In operant conditioning, what influence future behavior?
Reinforcement and punishment
In social learning theory, how does learning mainly occur?
Observing and Modelling
What is extinction in behavioral therapy?
The unconditioned is no longer paired with the conditioned stimuli; consequently, the conditioned stimulus loses its ability to evoke a conditioned response.
When a client is placed in the presence of the conditioned stimulus to extinguish the old response and condition a new one, what treatment are they undergoing?
Exposure therapy
How does systematic desensitization work?
Gradually exposing the client to the conditioned stimulus while the client
is in a relaxed state, with the goal of conditioning a new response
What are the strengths of the behavioral persectives?
Scientific, No speculation about hard-to-prove mental entities, Highly practical therapy, and Optimistic (abnormalities can be reconditioned)
What are the weaknesses if the behavioral perspectives?
Too deterministic, Internal processes ignored, Biological influences minimized, Animals are limited in what they teach us about human abnormality
What do cognitive perspectives consider to be the root causes abnormalities?
Thoughts and beliefs
What are techniques designed to help people
overcome their problems by thinking more rationally called?
Cognitive restructuring
Who founded cognitive therapy?
Aaron Beck
Emotional reasoning, jumping to conclusions, overgeneralization, and all-or-nothing thinking are all examples of what?
Cognitive Distortions
What is the Daily Record of
Dysfunctional Thoughts (DRDT) in cognitive therapy?
A form for clients to keep track of events, the emotional reactions, automatic thoughts about these events, how they responded to these events, and the outcomes.
For cognitive theorists, what are spontaneous thoughts that occur to us throughout daily life called?
Automatic thoughts
What are intermediate beliefs, according to cognitive theorists?
General rules and beliefs that influence automatic thoughts.
For cognitive theorists, what are basic philosophies or mindsets we hold about ourselves that influence
intermediate beliefs and automatic thoughts called?
Core beliefs
What are schemas?
Generalized scripts about how the world works that we use to anticipate what will happen in different situations
What do cognitive therapy focus on?
Challenging the
the illogic of automatic thoughts and replacing them with more reasonable thoughts and responses.
What do humanistic perspectives focus on most?
Personal meaning
What do humanistic therapies view people as?
Proactive
meaning-makers who strive to develop their full potential.
What method of therapy did Carl Rogers developed?
Person-centered therapy
In person-centered therapy, what is people’s innate motivation to fulfill their full potential called?
Actualization tendency
What are Carl Rogers’ three core conditions for change?
Unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness
What are the strengths of Humanistic perspectives?
Emphasis on the whole person as free and responsible, Emphasis on people as unique, emphasis on providing a supportive and safe environment for clients
What are the weaknesses of humanistic perspectives?
Unscientific, inadequate for treating serious disorders,
According to person-centered therapy, when doe psychopathology occur?
When there is a conflict between our need for positive regard and our need need to be true to our actualizing tendency
According to person-centered therapy, what is organismic valuing process?
People seek experiences that enhance their personal growth and avoid those that don’t
What form of therpay view people as free to make choices and pathology occurs because people are burdened with the responsibility to make meaning out of their life?
Existential Therapy
According to existential therapies, what are inauthenticity and authenticity?
The denial of responsibility for one’s choices / Awareness of one’s responsibility for creating meaning and
living by it
According to existential therapies, what are inauthenticity and authenticity?
The denial of responsibility for one’s choices / Awareness of one’s responsibility for creating meaning and
living by it
From what perspective do difficulties occur when people mistake their constructed meanings for reality itself and get locked
into meanings that no longer work well?
Constructivist
What is important to the sociocultural perspective?
the perspective focuses on the relationship between social and cultural factors, including ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status
What are the sociocultural views on abnormal behavior?
*abnormal behavior is viewed as the failures of society rather than the individual person
*the term “abnormal” is a societal label used to stigmatize social deviance
What two theoretical viewpoints explain the link between socioeconomic status and mental health problems?
*social causation model
*downward drift hypothesis
social causation model
the theory that suggests that people of lower SES are at greater risks for behavior problems because of the social stressors brought on poverty
downward drift hypothesis
the theory that suggests that behavioral problems lead people to drift down in social status
Multicultural and social justice perspectives
–Multicultural perspectives
–Culture
different kinds of sociocultural perspectives
three:
. multicultural/social justice perspectives
. consumer/service-user perspectives
. systems perspectives
Multicultural and social justice perspectives
emotional distress is the product of culture and social oppression, not biological
disease
consumer and service-user perspectives
highlight the ways in which society and the mental health professions treat those diagnosed as
mentally ill
systems perspectives
shift from working primarily with individuals to working mainly
with “systems” (i.e., groups, communities, and families)
sociocultural approaches
emphasize community mental health
care, which provides patients with support, guidance, and in some cases housing
Multicultural perspectives
human behavior always take place within a cultural context in which communal
values play a major role.
Culture
values, beliefs, and practices of any ethnic or cultural group
Culture-bound syndromes
. shared cultural values
. a dependent personality diagnosis—in being historically tied to a specific set of social norms and values
interested in cross-cultural data
see psychopathology as biologically and psychologically based, but influenced by course, development, and
expression by social factors
social construction
any socially shared way of defining, talking about, and understanding something that influences how people come to experience it
From social constructionist viewpoint
mental disorders are not universal things, but socially invented and context-dependent ways of talking about people
Social justice perspectives
build on multicultural perspectives, viewing abnormality as the product of social
inequalities
The difference between psychoanalytic and psychodynamic, especially in origins
“Classic” Freudian approaches >< Later approaches that trace their origins back to Freud but diverge from some of Freud’s core assertions
social justice vantage point
problems <- economic inequality,
racism, sexism, and other forms of social oppression
Feminist therapy
patriarchy is the root cause of many problems commonly labeled as
mental disorders.
Drive theories
People as psychologically motivated (i.e., driven) to think, feel, and act in certain ways, with psychic energy
false consciousness
oppressed people fail “to recognize their own economic and political interests by internalizing the values of their oppressors”
Psychosexual Stages
Oral, Anal, phallic, latency, genital
consciousness raising
involves educating clients about racism,
sexism, and other economic and social inequalities that they have unwittingly accepted and which lead to emotional distress
Transference
transferring of repressed feelings from patients (caused by other important people in patient’s life) to (out-of-sight )analyst
Object Relations Therapy
Object relations therapists define an object as any person or thing for which an infant develops an introjection, or internal mental representation, which result in recurring patterns of interacting with others later in life.
consumer movement
accepts psychiatric views of mental disorder and often finds traditional treatments helpful
Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy (TLDP)
Therapy interaction to identify the client’s cyclical maladaptive pattern, the problematic interpersonal pattern reproduced in relationship after relationship.
Stigma
society’s negative and often hostile responses to people carrying certain marks or labels, in this case those related to mental disorder
Projective identification
patients often project unwanted and split-off feelings about themselves onto their therapists → corrective emotional experience
consumer movement’s goal
better understand the needs and experiences of those stigmatized by mental disorders
service-user/survivor movement
psychiatric survivor movement
service-user/survivor movement
rejects mainstream psychiatric perspectives, contending that many interventions (prescription drugs and involuntary treatments) are often inhumane, abusive
Systems perspectives
look at how individuals are influenced by and function within “systems” of relationships
system
from small groups such as the family to the largest, called civilization
Family systems therapy
problems exist within a family’s dynamics, not within its individual members
identified patient
the family member outwardly displaying symptoms
Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy
Unspoken rules
Boundaries and enmeshed families
Coalitions and hierarchies
enmeshed families
the boundaries between members are
blurred
coalitions
some members are aligned with one another against other members
power hierarchies
some coalitions dominate others in detrimental ways
