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. 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!

4. Cultural Relativity • Judgments are made relative to the values of one’s culture

5. Fig. 14-2, p. 464

6. Fig. 14-1, p. 461

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. 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?

9. p. 461

10. Some Psychological Disorders • Psychotic disorder: Severe mental disorder characterized by hallucinations and delusions, social withdrawal, and a move away from reality • Organic mental disorder: Mental or emotional problem caused by brain pathology (i.e., brain injuries or diseases)

11. p. 465

12. p. 465

13. p. 465

14. Some More Psychological Disorders • Mood disorder: Major disturbances in mood or emotions, like depression or mania • Anxiety disorder: Disruptive feelings of fear, apprehension, anxiety, and behavior distortions

15. Table 14-4, p. 468

16. More Psychological Disorders • Somatoform disorder: Physical symptoms that mimic disease or injury (blindness, anesthesia) for which there is no identifiable physical cause • Dissociative disorder: Temporary amnesia, multiple identity, or depersonalization (like being in a dream world, feeling like a robot, feeling like you are outside of your body) • Personality disorder: Deeply ingrained, unhealthy, maladaptive personality patterns

17. A Final Few Psychological Disorders • Substance-related disorder: Abuse or dependence on a mind- or mood-altering drug, like alcohol or cocaine • Person cannot stop using the substance and may suffer withdrawal symptoms if they do • Sexual and gender identity disorders: Problems with sexual identity, deviant sexual behavior, or sexual adjustment • Neurosis: Archaic; once used to refer to, as a group, anxiety, somatoform, and dissociative disorders, and to some forms of depression

18. 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

19. Fig. 14-3, p. 469

20. Psychosis • Loss of contact with shared views of reality • Typically marked by delusions and hallucinations, and personality disintegration

21. Delusions • False beliefs that individuals insist are true, regardless of overwhelming evidence against them

22. 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)

23. 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

24. Other Psychotic Disorders • Organic psychosis: Psychosis caused by brain injury or disease • Dementia: Most common organic problem; serious mental impairment in old age caused by brain deterioration

25. Alzheimer’s Disease • Symptoms include memory loss, mental confusion, and progressive loss of mental abilities • Ronald Reagan most famous Alzheimer’s victim

26. p. 469

27. 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

28. 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

29. Video: Schizophrenia: Common Symptoms

30. The Four Subtypes of Schizophrenia

31. Disorganized Type • Incoherence, grossly disorganized behavior, bizarre thinking, and flat or grossly inappropriate emotions

32. p. 471

33. Catatonic Type • Marked by stupor, unresponsiveness, posturing, mutism, and sometimes, by agitated, purposeless behavior

34. p. 472

35. Paranoid Type • Preoccupation with delusions; also involves auditory hallucinations that are related to a single theme, especially grandeur or persecution • Most common schizophrenic disorder

36. Fig. 14-4, p. 472

37. Undifferentiated Type • Any type of schizophrenia that does not have specific paranoid, catatonic, or disorganized features or symptoms

38. Video: Schizophrenia: Distortion of Reality

39. 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

40. p. 474

41. p. 474

42. p. 474

43. p. 474

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

45. Fig. 14-6, p. 474

46. Schizophrenic Brain Images • Computed tomography (CT) scan: Computer enhanced X-ray of brain or body • Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan: Computer enhanced three-dimensional image of brain or body; based on magnetic field • MRIs show schizophrenic brains as having enlarged ventricles

47. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan • Computer-generated color image of brain activity; radioactive sugar solution is injected into a vein, eventually reaching the brain • Activity is abnormally low in frontal lobes of schizophrenics

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

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

50. Fig. 14-8, p. 475