Chapter 14
Psychological Disorders
I.
II.
Perspectives on Psychological Disorders
a. Defining
i. Ongoing patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are
deviant, distressful, and/or dysfunctional.
b. Understanding
i. Medical Model
ii. Biopsychosocial approach
c. Classifying
i. DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders—5th Edition)
ii. Necessary for insurance claims
iii. How is a disorder diagnosed?
d. Labeling
i. Labels are very psychologically powerful
ii. Can have a “life and influence of it’s own”
iii. Labels serve as self-fulfilling prophecies
Anxiety Disorders
a. Generalized Anxiety Disorder: a person is unexplainably and
continually tense and uneasy
b. Panic disorder: anxiety tornado
i. Panic attack: minutes-long episode of intense fear that
something horrible is going to happen
c. Phobias: anxiety disorders in which an irrational fear causes the
person to avoid some object, acitivity, or situation.
i. Specific phobia
ii. Social phobia
iii. Agoraphobia
d. Obsessive-compulsive disorder
III.
IV.
V.
i. Obsessions
1. Dirt, germ, toxins
2. Something terrible happening
3. Symmetry, order, exactness
ii. Compulsions
1. Excessive hand-washing, bathing, tooth brushing or
grooming
2. Repeating rituals (in/out of a door, up/down from a
chair)
3. Checking door, locks, appliances, etc.
e. Post-traumatic stress disorder: a person has lingering memories,
nightmares, and other symptoms for weeks after a severely
threatening, uncontrollable event
i. Post-traumatic growth
f. Understanding anxiety disorders
i. The Learning Perspective
1. Fear Conditioning
2. Observational learning
ii. The Biological Perspective
1. Natural selection
2. Genes
a. Fear in monkeys is genetic
b. Anxiety in humans is genetic
c. OCD is genetic
3. The Brain
Somatoform disorders: psychological disorder in which the symptoms
take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause.
i. Conversion disorder: a rare somatoform disorder in which
a person experiences very specific genuine physical
symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found
1. Losing sensation in a way that makes no
neurological sense
ii. Hypochondriasis: a somatoform disorder in which a person
interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a
disease.
Dissociative Disorders: disorders in which conscious awareness
becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts,
and feelings.
a. Dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder)
Mood Disorders: psychological disorders characterized by emotional
extremes
a. Major depressive disorder: occurs when at least five signs of
depression (including lethargy, feelings of worthlessness, or lost of
interest in family, friends, and activities, last two or more weeks
and are not caused by drugs or a medical condition.
b. Bipolar disorder: alternating between depression and mania
i. Occupational hazard of poets and artists
c. Understanding Mood Disorders
i. Many behavioral and cognitive changes accompany
depression
ii. Depression is widespread
iii. Compared with men, women are nearly twice ad vulnerable
to major depression
iv. Most major depressive episodes self-terminate
v. Stressful events related to work, marriage, and close family
relationships often precede depression
vi. With each new generation, depression is striking earlier
(now often in the late teens) and affecting more people
vii. The Biological Perspective
1. Genetic influences
a. Definitely genetically influenced
2. The Depressed Brain
a. Smaller frontal lobes
b. Signature brain activity of depression/mania
c. Neurotransmitter
i. norepinephrine
ii. serotonin
viii. The Social-Cognitive Perspective
1. Negative Thoughts and Negative Moods Interact
a. Learned helplessness
b. Overthinking?
c. Explanatory styles
VI.
Schizophrenia: a group of severe disorders characterized by
disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions and
inappropriate emotions and actions
a. Symptoms of Schizophrenia
i. Disorganized thinking
1. False beliefs often of persecution or grandeur, that
may accompany psychotic disorders
2. Paranoid
3. Trouble with selection of attention
ii. Disturbed perceptions
1. Hallucinations
a. Often auditory
b. Sometimes also visual
iii. Inappropriate emotions or actions
1. Laughing when you hear of someone’s death
2. Flat affect (no emotion)
3. Catatonia: remaining motionless for hours or days
(maybe months or year)
b. Onset and Development of Schizophrenia
i. In the transition into adulthood
ii. Subtypes
c. Understanding Schizophrenia
i. Brain Abnormalities
1. Dopamine Over activity
VII.
2. Abnormal Brain Activity and Anatomy
a. Low activity in frontal love
b. Decline in brain waves that reflect
synchronized neural firing in the frontal lobes
c. Brain shrinkage in specific areas
d. Famine increases risk of schizophrenia
3. Maternal Virus During Mid-pregnancy
ii. Genetic Factors
1. More closely related people of people who have
schizophrenia are more likely to have it
2. Babies that share placenta are more likely to both
develop schizophrenia
iii. Psychological Factors
1. A mother with severe schizophrenia
2. Birth complications
3. Separation from parents
4. Short attention span or poor muscle coordination
5. Disruptive or withdrawn
6. Emotional unpredictability
7. Poor peer relations and solo play
Personality Disorders: characterized by inflexible and enduring
behavior patterns that impair social functioning
a. Antisocial personality disorder: a personality disorder in which
the person, usually a man, exhibits a lack of conscience for
wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members. Maybe
aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist.
i. Sociopath/ psychopath
b. Understanding Antisocial Personality Disorder
i. Genetic
ii. Signs show in childhood