Psychological Disorders

1. Psychological Disorders

2. Definition • Patterns of behaviour and thought that are atypical, viewed as undesirable, maladaptive and that usually causes the persons who experience them considerable distress. • Psychological disorders involve biological, psychological, social and cultural factors. • Approximately 20% of the population experience some form of psychological disorder over the course of their life span.

3. How Psychologist study psychological disorders • Assessment interviews • Personality measures • Assessment of Brain Disorders • Behavioural Assessment

4. Mood Disorders • Major symptoms of depression include: • Negative mood • Reduced energy • Feelings of hopelessness or despair • Loss of interest in previously satisfying activities and difficulties in sleeping

5. Bipolar disorders involve wide swings in mood between deep depression and mania

6. Mood disorders are influenced by genetic factors and by disturbances in brain activity.

7. Anxiety disorders • These are disorders involving increased arousal accompanied by intense, persistent, generalized feelings of fear or apprehension

8. Panic Attacks • Involve symptoms of arousal coupled with intense fear-often of losing control is some specific situation

9. Phobias • Excessive fears focused on specific objects or situations

10. Obsessive-compulsive disorder • This is a disorder in which individuals have repetitious thoughts and engage in repetitious behaviours they can’t seem to control.

11. Somatoform disorders • These are disorders in which individuals have symptoms typically associated with physical diseases or conditions, but in which no known organic or physiological basis for the symptoms can be found.

12. Eating Disorders • In anorexia nervosa, individuals literally starve themselves until their body weight falls to dangerously low levels. • In bulimia, individuals maintain normal weight but they engaged in repeated cycles of binge eating and purging.

13. Personality Disorders • A continuing, inflexible, maladaptive pattern of inner experience and behaviour that causes a great distress or impaired functioning and differs significantly from the patterns expected in the person’s culture.

14. Anti-social personality • Person shows callous disregard for the rights and feelings of others; is manipulative, impulsive, selfish, aggressive, irresponsible, reckless; is willing to break the law, lie, cheat or exploit others for personal gain, without remorse; fails to hold a job.

15. Paranoid • Highly suspicious, untrusting, guarded, hypersensitive, easily slighted, lacking in emotion; holds grudges

16. Histrionic • Individual seeks attention and approval; is overly dramatic, self-centered, shallow, is demanding , manipulative easily bored, craves excitement

17. Narcissistic • Individual has exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement and is self-centered, arrogant, demanding, exploitive, envious; craves admiration and attention and lacks empathy

18. Borderline • Individual is unstable in mood, behaviour, self-image and social relationships; has intense fear of abandonment; exhibits impulsive and reckless behaviour; inappropriate anger, often self-mutilates