Mood, Personality, Dissociative Disorder Study Guide
Unipolar Depression
 “common cold” of psychological disorders.
 23% of men and 35% of women have reported experiencing some form of unipolar
depression.
 Symptoms:
o Poor appetite or overeating
o Insomnia or hypersomnia
o Lethargy
o Feelings of worthlessness
o Loss of interest in friends/family
 More common in women and in lower socioeconomic communities- suggests how
situational factors greatly influence unipolar depression
Major Depressive Disorder
 A mood disorder in which a person experiences two or more weeks of significantly
depressed mood
 Is characterized by low self-esteem and a lack of motivation
 Diagnosed when at least 5 signs of depression are present for a minimum of 2 weeks
 Women are almost twice as susceptible to MDO than men
o Women are more vulnerable to disorders involving internalized states
 Somatic symptoms include trouble going to sleep and waking up
 Origins of major depressive disorder:
o Exogenous: biological/genetic
o Endogenous: situational/ due to life events
o Primary: not a result of another illness/disorder
o Secondary: caused by another illness/ disorder
o Postpartum: after childbirth
o Seasonal affective: due to changes in weather
 Most major depressive episodes self-terminate temporarily or permanently to previous
behavioral patterns.
Bipolar disorder
 When a person experiences alternating periods of mania (extreme highs) and
depression(extreme lows)
o Also known as Manic Depressive Disorder
 Extreme highs are called manic episodes. These episodes are characterized by
o Feelings of high energy
o Grandiose cognition
 Thinking you're a superhero
o Motivational symptoms
 Compulsive gambling
o Hard time focusing on one thing
o Starting many projects at once
o Spending money wildly
o Becoming sexually hyperactive
o Experiencing delusions
o
Manics have little need for sleep for a period of time then after a few days crash
and sleep excessively
 After a manic episode the person may slip into a lethargic unresponsive stupor, have very
little motivation and energy
 Bipolar disorder does not differentiate between socioeconomic status suggesting it is
greatly influenced by biology/genetics
 Between .6-1.1% of US population has bipolar disorder
Understanding Mood Disorders
 Any theory for understanding depression must explain that:
1. Behavioral and cognitive changes go along with depression
o Depressed people are inactive, unmotivated, and negative, but when they no
longer feel depressed, those behavioral and cognitive behaviors disappear
2. Depression is prevalent throughout many countries and ages
3. Women are more vulnerable to depression than men
o Women tend to think, while men tend to act
4. Most depressive moods last less than 3 months
o Those with major depression usually recover by themselves even without therapy,
although it comes back frequently for half the people
o Recovery most permanent if treated the first couple times
5. The situation, such as stressful events, increase risk of depression
o Work, marriage, death, job loss, physical assault
Biological Perspective
 Risk of depression and bipolar disorder go up if you have a relative with a disorder,
especially a twin
 Genes direct biochemical events in our brain chemistry.
 Linkage analysis: Find families who have disorders appear across several generations,
geneticists examine DNA from affected to unaffected family members to find
differences.
 Diminished brain activity during depressed states and more activity during manic states.
o Frontal lobe and adjacent brain reward center is active when one has positive
emotions, less active when one has negative emotions.
o Hippocampus very vulnerable to stress; can become damaged
 Norepinephrine: Neurotransmitter that boosts arousal and mood
o Level of norepinephrine low during depression and abundant during mania.
 Serotonin: Neurotransmitter that increases arousal and boosts mood
o Exercise increases serotonin, decreasing one’s susceptibility to depression.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
 Learned helplessness: Acting depressed and withdrawn after a traumatic event.
o More common in women, because women respond more strongly to stress (Men
participate in more activities that cause little stress- TV, sports, parties)
 Overthinking: Rumination- Staying focused on a problem that distracts one from doing
other tasks, producing negative emotions
 Explanatory style: Who or what they blame for failures (externalizing vs. internalizing
blame)
Depressed people explain events in terms that are stable (“It’s going to last
forever”), global (“It’s affecting everything I do”), and internal (“It’s all my
fault”).
 Stressful experiences -> negative explanatory style -> depressed state ->cognitive and
behavioral changes -> negative experiences like rejection
Psychoanalytic Perspective
 Idea of loss
 Depression occurs when significant experience evokes feelings of loss from childhood
 Superego won’t accept anger towards parents, so emotions turn inward to self-blame
Behaviorist/Learning Perspective
 Depression caused by lack of rewards - Fewer rewards leads to feeling alienated from
society
 Gotlib and Robinson found that depressed people smile less, were less pleasant, and
generally more negative
Cognitive Perspective
 We make cognitive errors:
o Overgeneralizing
o Selective abstraction (taking detail out of context and ignoring all other details)
o Personalization (taking everything personally)
o Magnification and minimization
o Arbitrary influence (drawing conclusions without supporting them)
o Dichotomous thinking (seeing only black and white extremes of ideas)
Suicide and Self-Injury
 Whites have a higher suicidal rate than blacks
 Men more likely to actually commit suicide
 Most common method-bullet into the head
 Suicide rate higher with rich, nonreligious, single/widowed/divorced people, and those
with an unsupportive environment
 Those with alcohol dependence most likely to suicide
 Verbal hints, giving possessions away, withdrawal, all signs of someone about to commit
suicide
 Self-injury doesn’t lead to suicide; they are just suicide gestures, not suicide attempts
o
Personality Disorder
 Characterized by dysfunctional and long-lasting behavior patterns that harm one’s social
functioning
 Many different types of personality disorder, but not clearly differentiated (Avoidant,
schizoid, histrionic, narcissistic personality disorder)
Antisocial Personality Disorder
 A person who displays a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even towards loved ones
like friends and families.
o ex: con artist, son cuts mom with knife but doesn’t feel bad, lies or steals without
feeling remorse
 Not all criminals necessarily have APD because they typically portray concern towards
family and friends.
Psychopath vs. Sociopath
 Forms of antisocial personality disorder
 Psychopath: a condition usually caused by genetics
o more calm and collected and feign emotions
o more meticulous in planning their crimes
o can’t form relationships with people
o don’t feel emotions
o no conscience
o don’t feel guilt
 Sociopath: a condition caused more by childhood trauma
o can potentially form relationships with others
Understanding Antisocial Personality Disorder
 Seen in both biological and psychological links
 More likely to have APD if biological relative had it
 People with this disorder show little autonomic nervous system arousal
o Less responsive to emotional stimuli (lower levels of stress hormones and
empathy)
o Lower heart rate than normal people
 Early signs: someone who is impetuous, uninhibited, unconcerned, low anxiety
 However, if APD led in more positive direction, the person will be courageous,
adventurous, athletic, and more
 Hyper-active dopamine system drives them to perform a rewarding task, despite
consequences
 Adrian Raine:
o Studied the brains of 41 murderers and found that they had less frontal lobe tissue
and less frontal lobe activity than normal (frontal lobe helps us control impulses,
plan, and organize)
o Also found that those with APD mostly had biological risk factors (premature
birth) or social risk factors (family instability)
Dissociative Disorders:
 Dissociative amnesia: Loss of memory
 Dissociative fugue: Loss of identity (person may travel to a new place and identify
himself as a different person) *very rare*
 Dissociative Identity Disorder: Having two or more personalities
Dissociative Amnesia:
 Failure to recall events, caused by either physical or psychological factor
 Organic: Memory loss caused by physical trauma (a blow to the head, alcoholism,
Alzheimer’s)
 Psychogenic: Memory loss as a response to traumatic psychological distress
Psychogenic
Organic
Lose distant/recent memory
Lose recent memory but not
distant
Lose personal identity but has general knowledge (people,
surroundings, etc.)
Lose personal and general
knowledge
No retrograde amnesia present
Severe anterograde amnesia
Reverses abruptly
Retrograde gradually returns
**** Retrograde: Inability to recall events before incident (if you fall off a horse, you won’t be
able to recall what happened before falling off the horse)
**** Anterograde: Inability to recall events after incident (if you fall off a horse, you won’t be
able to recall what happened after falling off the horse-trouble with memory after)
Dissociative Fugue:
 Forgetting everything and even fleeing your own home
 May establish new identity
 Repressing past traumatic experience
 May last days to decades
 Amnesia may occur during flight
Dissociative Identity Disorder:
 A person has two or more distinct and alternating personalities that make up their
behavior
 Formally known as multiple personality disorder
 Mostly caused by childhood abuse
Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder
 Skeptics:
o Nicholas Spanos
 Conducted experiment in which he asked college students pretend to have
been accused of murder and receive hypnotic treatment by a psychiatrist.
Most students randomly displayed a second personality
 Led Spanos to question if a dissociative disorder is actually a disorder, not
just people role-playing and varying our “selves”
o Believe that it is a disorder created by therapists for fantasy-prone people.
Therapists try to dig out the multiple personalities, causing the person to role-play
and believe that he or she has become someone else
 Supporters:
o Ophthalmologist have found that when switching between personalities their
visual acuity and eye-muscle groups shifts
 Learning Perspective: Dissociative disorders are behaviors increased to reduce anxiety
 Psychodynamic Perspective: Defense against anxiety that cause unacceptable emotions
***Both believe that DID is a way of dealing with anxiety