Chapter 14 Psychological Disorders

1. Chapter 14 Psychological Disorders

2. What is Normal? • Psychopathology: Scientific study of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders; abnormal or maladaptive behavior • Subjective discomfort: Private feelings of pain, unhappiness, or emotional distress • Statistical abnormality: Having extreme scores on some dimension, such as intelligence, anxiety, or depression

3. Fig. 14-1, p. 461

4. What is Normal? (cont) • Social nonconformity: Disobeying societal standards for normal conduct; usually leads to destructive or self-destructive behavior • Situational context: Social situation, behavioral setting, or general circumstances in which an action takes place • Is it normal to walk around naked among strangers? If you are in a locker room and in the shower area, yes!

5. p. 461

6. Fig. 14-2, p. 464

7. Clarifying and Defining Abnormal Behavior (Mental Illness) • Maladaptive behavior: Behavior that makes it difficult to function, to adapt to the environment, and to meet everyday demands • Mental disorder: Significant impairment in psychological functioning • Those with mental illness lose the ability to adequately control thoughts, behaviors, or feelings

8. What are the risk factors for mental illness? • Group discussion

9. General Risk Factors for Contracting Mental Illness • Biological factors: Genetic defects or inherited vulnerabilities; poor prenatal care, head injuries, exposure to toxins, chronic physical illness, or disability • Psychological factors: Low intelligence, stress, learning disorders • Family factors: Parents who are immature, mentally ill, abusive, or criminal; poor child discipline; severe marital or relationship problems • Social conditions: Poverty, homelessness, overcrowding, stressful living conditions

10. Stress-Vulnerability Model

11. Insanity • Definition: A legal term; refers to an inability to manage one’s affairs or to be unaware of the consequences of one’s actions • Those judged insane (by a court of law) are not held legally accountable for their actions • Can be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital • How accurate is the judgment of insanity?

12. Psychotic disorder • Severe mental disorder characterized by hallucinations and delusions, social withdrawal, and a move away from reality • Psychosis • Loss of contact with shared views of reality • Typically marked by delusions and hallucinations, and personality disintegration

13. Features of Psychosis • Delusions- False beliefs that individuals insist are true, regardless of overwhelming evidence against them • Hallucinations- Imaginary sensations, such as seeing, hearing, or smelling things that do not exist in the real world • Most common psychotic hallucination is hearing voices • Note that olfactory hallucinations sometimes occur with seizure disorder (epilepsy)

14. Some More Psychotic Symptoms • Flat affect: Lack of emotional responsiveness; face is frozen in blank expression • Disturbed verbal communication: Garbled and chaotic speech; word salad • Personality disintegration: When an individual’s thoughts, actions, and emotions are no longer coordinated

15. Delusional Disorders • Marked by presence of deeply held false beliefs (delusions) • May involve delusions of grandeur, persecution, jealousy, or somatic delusions • Experiences could really occur! • Paranoid psychosis: Most common delusional disorder • Centers on delusions of persecution

16. Schizophrenia: The Most Severe Mental Illness • Psychotic disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, apathy, thinking abnormalities, and “split” between thoughts and emotions • Does NOT refer to having split or multiple personalities

17. Video: Schizophrenia: Common Symptoms

18. The Four Subtypes of Schizophrenia- • Disorganized Type • Catatonic Type • Paranoid Type • Undifferentiated Type

19. p. 471

20. p. 472

21. Video: Schizophrenia: Distortion of Reality

22. Causes of Schizophrenia • Psychological trauma: Psychological injury or shock, often caused by violence, abuse, or neglect • Disturbed family environment: Stressful or unhealthy family relationships, communication patterns, and emotional atmosphere • Deviant communication patterns: Cause guilt, anxiety, anger, confusion, and turmoil

23. Biochemical Causes of Schizophrenia • Biochemical abnormality: Disturbance in brain’s chemical systems or in the brain’s neurotransmitters • Dopamine over-activity in brain may be related to schizophrenia Dopamine: Neurotransmitter involved with emotions and muscle movement • Works in limbic system • Glutamate: A neurotransmitter; may also be involved

24. Fig. 14-6, p. 474

25. Fig. 14-7a, p. 475

26. Fig. 14-7b, p. 475

27. Fig. 14-8, p. 475

28. Organic Mental Disorder • Mental or emotional problem caused by brain pathology • brain injuries or diseases, drug damage, poisons, and so on • May cause severe emotional disturbances, impaired thinking, memory loss, personality changes, delirium or psychotic symptoms • Dementia: Most common organic problem; serious mental impairment in old age caused by brain deterioration

29. Mood Disorders • Major disturbances in mood or emotion, such as depression or mania • Depressive disorders: Sadness or despondency are prolonged, exaggerated, or unreasonable • Bipolar disorders: Involve both depression and mania or hypomania

30. Table 14-5, p. 477

31. Moderate Mood Disorders • Dysthymic disorder: Moderate depression that lasts for at least two years • Cyclothymic disorder: Moderate manic and depressive behavior that lasts for at least two years

32. Major Mood Disorders • Lasting extremes of mood or emotion and sometimes with psychotic features (hallucinations, delusions) • Major depressive disorder: A mood disorder where the person has suffered one or more intense episodes of depression; one of the more serious mood disorders

33. Bipolar Disorders • Bipolar I disorder: Person experiences extreme mania and deep depression • Mania: Excited, hyperactive, energetic, grandiose behavior • Bipolar II disorder: Person is mainly sad but has one or more hypomanic episodes (mild mania)

34. Video: Bipolar Disorder: Expression of Mood

35. Video: Bipolar Disorder: Delusional Thinking

36. Anxiety-Based Disorders • Anxiety: Feelings of apprehension, dread, or uneasiness • Adjustment disorders: When ordinary stress causes emotional disturbance and pushes people beyond their ability to effectively cope

37. Table 14-6, p. 481

38. Anxiety Disorders • Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) • Panic Disorder without Agoraphobia • Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia • Agoraphobia without Panic Disorder

39. Video: Panic Disorder: Symptoms

40. Video: Panic Disorder: Coping

41. More Anxiety Disorders • Specific Phobias • Social Phobia • Stress Disorders • Acute Stress Disorder • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

42. p. 482

43. Video: Snake Phobia

44. Obsession • Recurring images or thoughts that a person cannot prevent • Cause anxiety and extreme discomfort • Enter into consciousness against the person’s will • Most common: About being dirty, wondering if you performed an action (turned off the stove), or violence (hit by a car)

45. Compulsion • Irrational acts that person feels compelled to repeat • Help to control or block out anxiety created by obsessions • Checkers and cleaners

46. Video: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

47. Theoretical Causes of Anxiety Disorders • Humanistic: Unrealistic self-image conflicts with real self-image • Existential: Anxiety reflects loss of meaning in one’s life • Behavioristic: Anxiety symptoms and behaviors are learned, like everything else • Conditioned emotional responses that generalize to new situations

48. More Theoretical Causes of Anxiety Disorders • Avoidance learning: When making a particular response delays or prevents the onset of a painful or unpleasant stimulus • Anxiety reduction hypothesis: When reward of immediate relief from anxiety perpetuates self-defeating avoidance behaviors • Cognitive: When distorted thinking causes people to magnify ordinary threats and failures, leading to anxiety and distress

49. Somatoform Disorder Physical symptoms that mimic disease or injury (blindness, anesthesia) for which there is no identifiable physical causeSomatization Disorder- Person expresses anxieties through numerous physical complaints • Many doctors are consulted but no organic or physical causes are found

50. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy • Person fakes the medical problems of someone in his or her care in order to gain attention