Chapter 12
4th Edition
Psychological
Disorders
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Standards For What Is
Normal and Abnormal
• Cultural relativism
• Unusualness of behavior
• Discomfort of the person exhibiting the
behavior
• Mental illness
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Abnormal Behavior
• 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.
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Abnormal Behavior
• The criterion of personal distress is
frequently used In identifying 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.
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Abnormal Behavior
• The medical model views abnormal
behaviors as no different from illnesses
and seeks to identify symptoms and
prescribe medical treatments.
• The psychodynamic model considers
abnormal behavior as the result of
unconscious conflicts, often dating from
childhood.
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Abnormal Behavior
• The behavioral model Views abnormal
behaviors as learned through classical
conditioning, operant conditioning, and
modeling.
• The cognitive model suggests that our
interpretation of events and our beliefs
influence our behavior.
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Abnormal Behavior
• The sociocultural model emphasizes the
importance of social and cultural factors in
the frequency, diagnosis, and conception
of disorders.
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Classifying and Counting
Psychological Disorders
• The American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM) provides rules for
diagnosing psychological disorders that
have increased reliability.
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DSM-IV Criteria for Abnormality
• “a clinically significant behavioral or
psychological syndrome or pattern that
occurs in an individual and that is
associated with present distress (e.g., a
painful symptom) or disability (i.e.,
impairment in one or more areas of
functioning) or with a significantly
increased risk of suffering death, pain,
disability or an important loss of freedom.”
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Anxiety involves behavioral, cognitive, and
physiological elements.
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Symptoms of Anxiety
Somatic
Emotional Cognitive
Behavioral
Goosebumps emerge
Muscles tense
Heart rate increases
Respiration accelerates
Respiration deepens
Spleen contracts
Peripheral blood vessels
dilate
Liver releases
carbohydrates
Bronchioles widen
Pupils dilate
Perspiration increases
Adrenaline is secreted
Stomach acid is inhibited
Salivation decreases
Bladder relaxes
Sense of dread
Terror
Restlessness
Irritability
Escape
Avoidance
Aggression
Freezing
Decreased
appetitive
responding
Increased aversive
responding
Anticipation of harm
Exaggerating of danger
Problems in
concentrating
Hypervigilance
Worried, ruminative
thinking
Fear of losing control
Fear of dying
Sense of unreality
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Phobias are
excessive, irrational
fears of activities,
objects, or situations.
• The most frequently
diagnosed phobia is
agoraphobia.
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Phobic Disorders
Agoraphobia
Fear of places where help might not
be available in case of an
emergency
Specific Phobias
Fear of specific objects, places or
situations
 Animal type
 Natural environment type
 Situational type
 Blood-injected-injury type
Social Phobia
Fear of being judged or
embarrassed by others
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Classical conditioning and modeling have
been offered as explanations for the
development of phobias.
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Frequent panic attacks
(which resemble heart
attacks) are the main
symptom of panic
disorder.
• Biological and cognitive
explanations for this
disorder have been
proposed.
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• A person with a chronically high level of
anxiety may suffer from generalized
anxiety disorder.
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Most people who have the diagnosis of
obsessive compulsive disorder have both
obsessions and compulsions.
• Obsessions are senseless thoughts,
images, or impulses that occur repeatedly;
they are often accompanied by
compulsions, which are irresistible,
repetitive acts.
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Somatoform disorders involve the
presentation of physical symptoms that
have no known medical causes, but
psychological factors are involved.
• Among these disorders are
hypochondriasis, somatization disorder
and conversion disorder.
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Dissociative disorders involve disruptions
in some function of the mind.
• In dissociative amnesia, memories cannot
be recalled; in dissociative fugue, memory
loss is accompanied by travel.
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Anxiety, Somatoform, and
Dissociative Disorders
• Dissociative identity disorder (multiple
personality) is characterized by the
presence of two or more personalities in
the same individual.
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Mood Disorders
• The symptoms of depression include
sadness, reduced pleasure and energy
levels, feelings of guilt, sleep disturbances,
and suicidal thinking.
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Mood Disorders
• The lifetime
prevalence of
depression is twice as
high among women
as among men;
prevalence rates
around the world are
increasing.
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Mood Disorders
• Suicide, which is often associated with
depression, is one of the leading causes of
death in the United States.
• The risk factors for suicide Include being
male, being unmarried, and being
depressed.
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Mood Disorders
• The risk factors for
suicide Include being
male, being
unmarried, and being
depressed.
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Mood Disorders
• Bipolar disorder involves swings between
depression and mania.
• The symptoms of mania include euphoria,
increased energy, poor judgement,
decreased sleep, and elevated selfesteem
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Mood Disorders
• Mood disorders tend
to run in families,
which suggests
genetic transmission.
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Mood Disorders
• Depression may involve low levels of
norepinephrine or serotonin.
• According to the learned helplessness
model, depression can also be brought on
when people believe that they cannot
control outcomes.
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Mood Disorders
• A refinement of the learned helplessness
model, the hopelessness model, suggests
that typical ways of explaining negative
events may be at the root of depression.
• Cognitive explanations focus on how
errors in logic contribute to the
development of depression.
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Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia affects approximately 1% of
the population.
• Although it is often confused with
dissociative identity disorder, the two
disorders are different.
• Schizophrenia is characterized by a split
between thoughts and emotions and a
separation from reality.
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Schizophrenia
• The symptoms of schizophrenia are classified as
positive (distortions or excesses) or negative
(reductions or losses).
• Positive symptoms include fluent but
disorganized speech, delusions, and
hallucinations.
• Negative symptoms include poverty of speech
and disturbances in emotional expression such
as flat affect.
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Schizophrenia
• The DSM-IV lists five subtypes of
schizophrenia: catatonic, disorganized,
paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated.
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Schizophrenia
• 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.
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Schizophrenia
• Evidence of various brain abnormalities,
including larger ventricles, in people with
schizophrenia suggests a possible
biological cause.
• The neurotransmitter, dopamine, seems to
be involved in the development of
schizophrenia.
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Schizophrenia
• Environmental influences on
schizophrenia include stress and hostile
family communication.
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Schizophrenia
• A predisposition to schizophrenia may be
inherited, with the actual development of
the disorder requiring the presence of
other factors.
• This is called the Diathesis-Stress Model
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Personality Disorders
• Long-standing patterns of thought,
behavior, and emotions that are
maladaptive for the individual or for people
around him or her.
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Personality Disorders
• Usually not as obvious or disruptive as
Axis I Disorders
• Social/Occupational impairment to various
degrees
• Can be observed in childhood or
adolescence – continue throughout the
lifetime unless treated
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Personality Disorders (cont.)
• Diagnosed only when personality traits are
inflexible and maladaptive, and cause
noticeable impairment or subjective
distress
• May function relatively well
• Rarely seek treatment on their own
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Cluster A Personality Disorders
(Odd/ Eccentric)
Paranoid PD: a pattern of distrust and
suspiciousness such that other’s motives are
interpreted as malevolent
Schizoid PD: a pattern of detachment from social
relationships and a restricted range of emotional
expression
Schizotypal PD: a pattern of acute discomfort in
close relationships, cognitive or perceptual
distortions, and eccentricities of behavior
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Cluster B Personality Disorders
Dramatic/Emotional/Erratic
Antisocial PD: a pattern of disregard for, and
violation of, the rights of others
Borderline PD: a pattern of instability in
interpersonal relationships, self-image, and
affects, and marked impulsivity
Histrionic PD: a pattern of excessive emotionality
and attention-seeking
Narcissistic PD: a pattern of grandiosity, need for
admiration, and lack of empathy
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Cluster C Personality Disorders
Anxious/Fearful
Avoidant PD: a pattern of social inhibition, feelings
of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative
evaluation
Dependent PD: a pattern of submissive and
clinging behavior related to an excessive need
to be taken care of
Obsessive-Compulsive PD: a pattern of
preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism,
and control
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