Psychological Disorders
Psychological behaviors run a continuum from very mild to extreme. Everyone has
these behaviors to one degree or another. It is not until a behavior or feeling interferes
with your quality of life that they become a disorder.
Psychological Order
Self-acceptance: understanding yourself and accepting the good and bad parts of
yourself.
Positive relationships with others: ability to form good trusting interpersonal
relationships.
Autonomy: self-controlled and able to resist peer pressure.
Psychological Order
Environmental masters: internal locus of control; master of your domain.
Purpose in life: goals and sense of direction; not diffused.
Personal Growth: see yourself growing and expanding; self knowledge; self
actualization.
Psychological Disorders are:
Atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and unjustifiable behavior.

Psychological Disorders: Causes
Are not usually caused by a single factor. The medical model is probably not correct
where you can take a pill to rid yourself of a disorder.
The bio-psycho-social school most disorders are caused by a biological predisposition,
physiological state, psychological dynamics, and social circumstances.
Defining Disorders
DSM IV-Diagnostic and statistical manual vol. 4.: attempts to describe psychological
disorders, without explaining the causes, predicts the future course, and suggests
treatments.
Categorizes 230 disorders, in 17 categories.
Dangers of labeling
Labeling someone with a disorder can create self-fulfilling prophesies, where the label
creates the behavior. Also, if a professional hears a persons “has” a disorder, they may
look back at that person’s history and see things that “caused” those behaviors, which
might not be accurate.
Anxiety Disorders
General anxiety disorder: Persistent symptoms of an excited sympathetic, nervous
system: sweating, heart racing, dizziness, shaky accompanied by persistent negative
feelings and fear…not triggered by specific events.
Anxiety Disorders
Panic disorder: unpredictable, minutes long intense anxiety attack, as if you're going to
be killed any second, but no specific, real threat is apparent.
Phobias: persistent, irrational fear of a specific object of situation. Very common.
Spiders, snakes, heights, water, enclosed spaces are all very common phobias.
Anxiety Disorders
Obsessive-Compulsive disorder:
Obsessions: intrusive thoughts or fears.
Compulsions: repetitive behaviors that sooth the fears
Different perspectives would ascribe different causes:
Psychoanalytic: repressed feelings during childhood symbolized by trigger.
Behavioral: learned fear, which has been reinforced, or social learning, imitating
others who has fear like parents. May be generalized from other learned experiences: one
dog to all dogs.
Biological: predisposed genetically to be afraid of things that can cause death: snakes,
spiders, height, enclosed places, disease.
Post Traumatic Stress disorder
Caused by prolonged or intensely stressful situations, like war or rape. Symptoms:
difficulty sleeping, nightmares; anxiety attacks or GAD; intrusive memories; Guilt
associated with event;
Some psychologists dismiss this disorder pointing to those who do not get it after
experiencing similar trauma. That probably has more to do with biological predisposition
than to lack of evidence that PTSD existence.
Mood Disorders
Major, clinical depression; dysthimic depression; bipolar disorder. Mood
disorders are the most common psychological disorders: called the common cold of
disorders. Depression among the young is on the rise: more diagnosis or more
cases?
Major depressive disorder
Major depressive disorder: two or more weeks of depressed mood, intense feelings of
worthlessness and hopelessness; and diminished interest in things that were once
considered pleasurable. People feel like they are in a deep black hole with no way to get
out. The hopeless feeling often prevents them from seeing any reason to try to get out.
Very dangerous illness.
Symptoms
Symptoms include: discouraging feelings about the future; life dissatisfaction; isolation
from others; difficulty sleeping or sleeping a lot; inability to concentrate; lethargy;
feelings of worthlessness; loss of interest in friends or family activities.
9 out of 10 go untreated, or misdiagnosed.
Incidents of Major Depression
Treatments
Most effective combination of SSRI Antidepressants and cognitive therapy.
In extreme cases, ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, where the send jolts of electricity
into the brain, causing seizures. For effective for several month for deep, suicidal major
depression.
SSRI antidepressants.
ECT
Dysthmic depression
Dysthmic depression: down in the dumps mood that lasts from months to years; the
feelings aren't as intense, but they last longer. Difficult to detect because of the lack of
intensity but takes a large toll on body and psychology systems.
Treatments for depression
Cognitive therapy is effective, with antidepressants: trying to change internal sentences.
Because depressed people see the world through dark glasses, their thoughts intensify the
feelings leading to a downward spiral.
Medical: now treated with classes of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. SSRIs. They keep
serotonin in the synapse longer, elevating mood.
Treatment for Dythmic depression
College students with dysthmic or moderate depression responded far better to aerobics
than other treatments.
Cognitive Style
Bipolar disorder (manic-depression):
Bipolar disorder (manic-depression): alternates between hopelessness and lethargy of
depression and over-excited manic state.
Bipolar disorder (manic-depression):
Manic state: typically over-talkative; overactive; little or no sleep; highly impulsive,
loud, flighty, hard to interrupt sexually less-inhibited. Grandiose optimism and selfesteem. May be very irritable.
People then fall back to either a normal state, or into a major depressed state
Treatment for Bipolar
Treatment: In manic state: high levels of neurotransmitter norepinephrine.
Treatment: usually with lithium for the manic state and antidepressants for the
depression.
Treatment is very effective if patients continue using medication.
Depression Facts
Facts: Major Depression usually lasts less than three months; may or may not return;
often triggered by stressful events, although not necessarily caused by it (biological
predisposition);
Dysthimic depression lasts two years or longer.
Women are twice as likely to have it than men;
Depression is a whole body disorder with biochemical and psychological roots,
therefore generally requires both therapy and antidepressant treatment.
Depression facts.
Those who depressed often become socially isolated as they withdraw from friends and
friends withdraw from them as their “old self” changes. The depressed person is likely to
blame themselves with negative “self speak” which exacerbates
Schizophrenia
A group of severe psychotic disorders characterized by disorganized thought and
delusional thinking disturbed perceptions and inappropriate emotions and actions. Onset
often occurs in late adolescence's.
Delusion-irrational, unjustifiable, usually paranoid, belief of persecution by an unseen
entity.
Hallucinations: the perception of non-existent, external stimuli, usually auditory.
Types:
Types continued
Chronic: slowly develops over time, prognosis bad.
Acute: reaction to life stresses, quick onset, good prognosis.
Schizophrenia thinking may be seen as an uncontrolled rapid change of selective
attention, where the mind rapidly shifts from one thought to another.
Causes
Psychology: triggering experiences, genes predispose but some react to traumatic
triggers by developing schizophrenia. They vary.
Biochemical: 6 times the normal amount of dopamine receptors that increase brain
activity to manic levels. Thus dopamine blockers reduce symptoms.
Causes
It is also thought to perhaps be triggered or caused by the introduction of a prenatal
virus that affects brain development, possibly in the thalamus. People conceived in
Winter months are more apt to develop schizophrenia in Northern hemisphere, while the
reverse is true in the Southern.
Rule of Thirds
About 1/3 of people who develop schizophrenia only have one episode, 1/3 have
reoccurring episodes, and 1/3 are chronic with unremitting symptoms.
Causes
Amphetamines and cocaine sometimes intensify symptoms. Dopamine is also
associated with physical movement, disruption of is associated with schizophrenia.
Brain anatomy: they have abnormal brain tissue, low frontal lobe activity.
Thalamus react smaller than normal and is reactive that may cause brain over
stimulization.
People exposed to certain flu viruses during prenatal development have higher
incidences.
Genetic factors
Definite genetic link: the closer you are genetically to someone with Schizophrenia, the
more likely you are to get it.
1 in 100 people get it.
1 in 10 of siblings
1 in 2 identical twins, even if raised apart
Genetic Link
Dissociate Disorders
Dissociation is the feeling that you are outside of yourself, looking at yourself. That
you’re mind is separate from body. Person have separated parts of their personality or
memory for consciousness.
Dissociative Identity disorder: Multiple Personality Disorder
This is a disorder wherein your mind partitions itself into two or more distinct
personalities that may or may not know about each other. One “personality” emerges to
handle stressful situations that the whole psyche or other parts cannot handle.
Caused by traumatic event or events where the mind represses parts of itself that can’t
handle the pain. Repressed from a psychoanalytical point of view.
Dissociative Personality Disorder
Skeptics believe that people or either lying, are fantasy-prone, or have had this disorder
suggested to them by therapists.
It only seems to occur in places, like here, where people know about it through books
like the Sybil and the Three Faces of Eve.
HOWEVER
When they do brain scans of mulitples, the different personalities have different brain
wave patterns.
Dissociative Amnesia
Selective memory loss of a specific traumatic event. The amnesia vanishes are
abruptly as it begins and rarely reoccurs.
Dissociative Fugue
This type of dissociation the person just leaves their home and starts on new life, with
no memory of their past life. The memory my reoccur and the person may return home,
only to leave again.
Somatoform Disorders
These are physical problems, with no Organic cause, like hysteria..the causes are
psychological:
Conversion Disorder, when you lose sight or become paralyzed with no organic cause.
Hypochondria: the belief that you have illness that don’t exist.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Personality Disorders
Personality consists of enduring traits or characteristics…so personality disorders are
persistent traits or characteristics that are atypical, disturbing, maladaptive and
unjustified.
Prognosis for treatment for many is not very good.
Personality Disorders
Antisocial: most common, person has no conscience. Lacks a sense of wrongdoing,
even toward friends or family members.
Usually a man thing.
Usually emerges before 15
Person may be aggressive and/or ruthless. Deceiving or conning others or be aggressive
sexually with no remorse. Psycopaths, serial killers, sociopaths.
Personality Disorders
Histrionic: displays shallow, attention-getting behaviors, feeling uncomfortable when
not the center of attention.
Acting in an aggressive, sexual way that makes others uncomfortable.
Rapid shifting of emotions. Dressing provocatively to gain attention, speaks in dramatic
tones.
Personality Disorders
Narcissistic: Preoccupied with themselves and an exaggerated sense of their own
importance.
Personality Disorders
Borderline: unstable sense of self; rapidly changing affect; will be clingy one
minute and then hostile the next; try to pull people close and then do things to drive
them away; very manipulative to gain attention; unstable relationships; Very poor
prognosis for recovery, so therapists won’t even treat them.