Download Psychological Disorders

Fundamentals of Psychology:
The Brain, The Person, The World
Stephen M. Kosslyn
Robin S. Rosenberg
Allyn & Bacon
Psychological Disorders
Chapter 11
Psychological Disorder
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The presence of a constellation of symptoms that create significant distress or impair work, school,
family, relationships, or daily living
Four factors
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Deviance (atypical)
Distress
Dysfunction (disability)
Danger
Psychological Disorders- Etiology
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Psychotic disorder
 person loses contact with reality
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Neurotic disorder (term seldom used now)
 usually distressing but that allows one to think rationally and function socially
 Freud saw the neurotic disorders as ways of dealing with anxiety
 experiences irrational ideas and distorted perceptions
Intern’s Disease
Upon hearing the symptoms of a disorder, the tendency for people to believe that they or someone they know shares those
symptoms
Only a trained professional can diagnose a psychological disorder.
What is Abnormal Behavior?
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By the standard of statistical rarity, behavior is abnormal when it is infrequent.
Dysfunctional behavior interferes with a person's ability to function in day-to-day life.
What is Abnormal Behavior?
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The criterion of personal distress is frequently used to identify the presence of a psychological disorder.
Departures from social norms are used to define deviant, and therefore abnormal behaviors; social norms,
however, can change over time and vary across cultures.
What is Abnormal Behavior?
Insanity – is a legal ruling that an accused individual is not responsible for a crime.
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Contrary to the public's understanding of the insanity plea, such pleas are infrequently used and rarely
successful.
Explaining Abnormality
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THE BRAIN
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THE PERSON
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THE GROUP
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Diathesis-stress model
Classical and operant conditioning
Labels
Explaining Abnormality
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(BRAIN) -- The medical model views abnormal behaviors as no different from illnesses and seeks to identify symptoms and
prescribe medical treatments.
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(PERSON) – The psychodynamic model considers abnormal behavior as the result of unconscious conflicts, often dating
from childhood.
Explaining Abnormality
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(PERSON) -- The cognitive model suggests that our interpretation of events and our beliefs influence our behavior.
(PERSON) -- The behavioral model views abnormal behaviors as learned through classical conditioning, operant
conditioning, and modeling.
(GROUP) -- The sociocultural model emphasizes the importance of social and cultural factors in the frequency,
diagnosis, and conception of disorders.
Explaining Abnormality
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Bio-psycho-social Perspective
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assumes that biological, sociocultural, and psychological factors combine and interact to produce psychological disorders
Labels and Abnormality
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Rosenhan “On being sane in insane places”
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8 pseudopatients claimed to hear voices
Admitted to psychiatric hospitals
Stopped reporting symptoms
Normal behaviors were interpreted as pathological
Doctors rarely responded to questions
Many real patients were not fooled
Categorizing Disorders
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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV-R) -Provides rules for diagnosing
psychological disorders that have increased reliability.
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Axis I: clinical disorders
Axis II: personality disorders and mental retardation
Axis III: general medical conditions
Axis IV: psychosocial and environmental problems
Axis V: global assessment of functioning
Classifying and Counting Psychological Disorders
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Phobias, alcohol and drug abuse or dependence, and major depressive disorder are among the most common
psychological disorders.
Classifying and Counting Psychological Disorders
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Many people suffer from more than one psychological disorder (co-morbidity).
Mood Disorders
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Mood Disorders
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Depression
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characterized by emotional extremes
The symptoms of include sadness, reduced pleasure and energy levels, feelings of guilt, sleep disturbances, and suicidal
thinking.
Mood Disorders
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Major depressive disorder
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A mood disorder in which a person, for no apparent reason, experiences two or more weeks of depressed moods,
feelings of worthlessness, and diminished interest or pleasure in most activities
Lifetime prevalence
 Women 20%
 Men 12%
Dysthymia
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A mood disorder similar to major depression, but is less severe and more chronic (long-lasting) in nature
Lifetime prevalence 6%
Mood Disorders
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Suicide
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Is often associated with depression, is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
Attempted by 30% of depressed people
The risk factors
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Include being male, being unmarried, and being depressed.
Mood Disorders
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Bipolar disorder occurs when a person’s moods swings between depression and mania.
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Formerly called manic depression
Lifetime prevalence 1%
The symptoms of mania include euphoria, increased energy, poor judgment, impulsivity, insomnia, decreased
sleep, and self aggrandizement.
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Mania
 Manic episode
 Prodromal phase
Often cycles with depression
Explaining Mood Disorders
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THE BRAIN
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THE PERSON
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Hereditary factors
 Often runs in families
Lower levels of serotonin and norepinephrine
Frontal lobe
 Increased activity
Amygdala
Attributional style – How the person interprets their surroundings.
Learned helplessness – typified by when someone doesn’t feel in control the outcome of their situation.
THE GROUP
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Diminished social support network
Explaining Mood Disorders
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PET scans show that brain energy consumption rises and falls with emotional swings
Explaining Mood Disorders
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Altering any one component of the chemistry-cognition-mood circuit can alter the others
Mood Disorders
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The vicious cycle of depression can be broken at any point
Anxiety Disorders
Are characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that attempt to reduce anxiety
Anxiety Disorders
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder
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Phobia
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The person is typically tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal
persistent, irrational fear of a specific object or situation
The most frequently diagnosed phobia is agoraphobia
Anxiety Disorders
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Panic disorder
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Frequent panic attacks (which resemble heart attacks) marked by a minutes-long episode of intense dread in which a
person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensation are the main symptom
of panic disorder. It is also characterized by
Biological and cognitive explanations for this disorder have been proposed.
Lifetime prevalence 3%
Anxiety Disorders
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Phobias
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Social phobia
 Lifetime prevalence 13%
Specific phobia
 Animal fears
 Blood-injection-injury fears
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Natural environment fears
Situation fears
Miscellaneous fears
Lifetime prevalence 10%
Anxiety Disorders
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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
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Obsessions
 Are senseless thoughts, images, or impulses that occur repeatedly; they are often accompanied by
Compulsions
 which are irresistible, repetitive acts, such as:
 Checking
 Washing
 Ordering
 Lifetime prevalence 2%
Anxiety Disorders
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PET Scan of brain of person with Obsessive/ Compulsive disorder
High metabolic activity (red) in frontal lobe areas involved with directing attention
Stress Disorders
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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
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Traumatic event
Symptoms
 Re-experience event
 Avoidance and emotional numbing
 Heightened arousal
Lifetime prevalence 8% (among Americans)
 Prevalence strongly affected by environment
 Violence
 Disasters
Stress Disorders
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Somatoform disorders involve the presentation of physical symptoms that have no known medical causes, but
psychological factors are involved. Among these disorders are:
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hypochondriasis,
somatization disorder, and
conversion disorder.
Stress Disorders
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Dissociative disorders involve disruptions in some function of the mind.
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Dissociative amnesia occurs when memories cannot be recalled; in dissociative fugue, memory loss is accompanied by
travel.
Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more personalities in the same individual.
 Formally known as multiple personality disorder
Schizophrenia
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Positive symptoms
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Delusions
Hallucinations
Disordered behavior
Disorganized speech
Negative symptoms
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Flat affect
Alogia
Avolition
Schizophrenia
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Four subtypes
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Paranoid
Disorganized
Catatonic
Undifferentiated or Residual
Explaining Schizophrenia
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THE BRAIN
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Hereditary
 Schizophrenia tends to run in families.
 The risk of developing the disorder increases with the degree of genetic relatedness between an individual and a
family member who has schizophrenia.
Ventricle size
Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, seems to be involved in the development of schizophrenia
Explaining Schizophrenia
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THE PERSON
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High reactivity to stress
Misinterpretation of the environment
Emotional dampening
THE GROUP
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High expressed emotion
Social selection and social causation
 Hostile family interactions and communications
 Extreme levels of stress
Explaining Schizophrenia
A widely accepted explanation among psychologists and physicians is:
 A predisposition that may be inherited, with the actual development of the disorder requiring the presence of
other factors including exposure to high levels of stress.
Eating Disorders
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Anorexia nervosa
Bulimia nervosa
Factors
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Genetic predisposition
Gender
Cultural factors
Lifetime prevalence 0.5%-4%
Personality Disorders
Personality disorders are long-standing dysfunctional patterns of behavior.
Categorizations of Personality Disorders
 Dramatic Types
 Antisocial personality disorder
 Borderline personality disorder
 Narcissistic personality disorder
 Histrionic personality disorder
 Anxious Types
 Dependent personality disorder
 Avoidant personality disorder
 Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
 Odd Types
 Paranoid personality disorder
 Schizoid personality disorder
 Schizotypal personality disorder