Psychology Notes: Psychological Disorders

Psychological Disorders:

• "harmful dysfunction" in which behavior is judged to be atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and unjustifiable
• Medical Perspective - psychological disorders are sicknesses and can be diagnosed, treated and cured
• Bio-Psycho-Social Perspective: assumed biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors combined to interact causing psychological disorders

                - used to be called Diathesis - Stress Model: diathesis meaning predisposition and stress meaning environment

• DSM-IV: Diagnostic Statistical Manual

                - neurotic disorders: distressing but one can still function in society and act rationally
                - psychotic disorders: person loses contact with reality, experiences distorted perceptions

• Anxiety Disorder: patient fears something will happen to them; state of intense apprehension, uneasiness, uncertainty, or fear
• Phobia: person experiences sudden episode of intense dread; irrational fear
• Generalized Anxiety Order (GAD): person is continuously tense, apprehensive and in a state of automatic nervous system arousal; constantly tense and worried, feels inadequate, oversensitive, can't concentrate, and suffers from insomnia
• Panic Disorder: marked by a minute-long episode of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking and other frightening sensations
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): persistent unwanted thoughts (obsessions) cause someone to feel the need (compulsion) to engage in a particular action
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): flashbacks or nightmares following a person's involvement in or observation of an extremely stressful event; memories of the event cause anxiety
• Somatoform Disorder: occurs when a person manifests a psychological problem through a physiological symptom
• Hypochondriasis: frequent physical complaints for which medical doctors are unable to locate the cause; believe that minor issues (headache, upset stomach) are indicative are more severe illnesses
• Conversion Disorder: report existence of severe physical problems with no biological reason; ex: blindness and paralysis
• Dissociative Disorder: involve a disruption in the conscious process

                1. Psychogenic Disorders: person cannot remember things with no physiological basis for disruption in meaning; retrograde amnesia, NOT organic
                2. Dissociative Fugue: people with psychogenic amnesia find themselves in an unfamiliar environment
                3. Dissociative Identity Disorder: aka Multiple Personality Disorder; person has several rather than one integrated personality; people with DID commonly have a history of a childhood abuse or trauma

• Mood Disorders: experience extreme or inappropriate emotion

                - Major Depression: unipolar depression; unhappy for at least two weeks with no apparent cause; depression is common cold of psychological disorders
                - Seasonal Affective Disorder: experience depression during winter month; based not on temperature, but on amount of sunlight; treated with light therapy
                - Bipolar Disorder: aka maniac depression; involves periods of depression and maniac episodes; involves feelings of high energy
                - Personality Disorders: well-established, maladaptive ways of behaving that negatively affect people's ability to function; dominates personality

1. Antisocial Personality Disorder: lack of empathy; little regard for other's feelings; view the world as hostile and look out for themselves
2. Dependent Personality Disorder: rely too much on the attention and help of others
3. Histrionic Personality Disorder: needs to be the center of attention
4. Narcissistic Personality Disorder: having an unwarranted sense of self-importance; thinking you are the center of the universe 

• Schizophrenic Disorders - 1 in every 100 people; disorganized thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions/actions

                - disorganized thinking: fragmented and bizarre and distorted with false beliefs, comes from a breakdown in selective attention, cannot filter out information
                -delusions: false belief, delusions of persecution (someone is chasing you), delusion of grandeur
                - disturbed perceptions: hallucinations - sensory experiences without sensory stimulation
                - inappropriate emotions and actions: laughing at inappropriate times, flat effect, senseless, compulsive acts, catatonia - motionless

• Positive v.s. Negative Symptoms: 1. hallucinations 2. disorganized 3. diluted in speaking 4. inappropriate laughter, tears, or rage ; 1. toneless voice 2. expressionless 3. mute 4. very rigid body

Types of Schizophrenia:

• Disorganized Schizophrenia - disorganized speech or behavior, or flat or inappropriate emotion; "imagine the worst"
• Paranoid Schizophrenia - preoccupation with delusions or hallucinations, "someone is out to get me"
• Catatonic Schizophrenia - parrot like repeating of another's speech and movements
• Undifferentiated Schizophrenia - many and varied symptoms