Psychological Disorders

Abnormal Behaviour
1. Medical Model: Proposes that it is useful to think of abnormal behaviour as a disease
  1. Diagnosis: Distinguishing one illness from another
  2. Etiology: Refers to the apparent causation and developmental history of an illness
  3. Prognosis: A forecast about the probable course of an illness
2. Criteria
  1. 1. Deviance
    1. People are often said to have a disorder because their behaviours deviate from what society considers acceptable
  2. 2. Maladaptive behaviour
    1. Judged to have a psychological disorder because their everyday adaptive behaviour is impaired (Such as substance use)
  3. 3. Personal distress
    1. Diagnosis of psychological disorder is based on an individuals report of great personal distress
  4. Normality and abnormality exist on a continuum
3. Stereotypes
  1. 1. Psychological disorders are incurable
  2. 2. People with psychological disorders are often violent and dangerous
  3. 3. People with psychological disorders behave in bizzare ways and are very different from normal people
4. Psychodiagnosis (classification)
  1. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (Current version is DSM-5)
    1. 1) History 2) Criteria 3) Assessment Measures
  2. Comorbidity: The coexistence of two or more disorders
5. Prevalence of Psychological Disorders
  1. Epidemiology: The study of the distribution of mental or physical disorders in a population
    1. Prevalence: Refers to the percentage of a population that exhibits a disorder during a specified time period
    2. Lifetime Prevalence: Percentage of people who endure a specific disorder at any time of their lives
  2. Life-time risk of a psychiatric disorder to be 51%
  3. Most common types of psychological disorders
    1. 1) Substance use disorders
    2. 2) Anxiety disorders
    3. 3) Mood disorders
Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders
1. Anxiety Disorders: A class of disorders marked by feelings of excessive apprehension and anxiety
  1. occur in roughly 19% of population
  2. Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Marked by chronic, high level of anxiety that is not tied to any specific threat
  3. Specific Phobias: Marked by a persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that presents no realistic danger
  4. Panic Disorders: Characterized by recurrent attacks of overwhelming anxiety that usually occurs suddenly and unexpectedly
  5. Agoraphobia: Fear of going out to public places
2. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders(OCD): Is marked by persistent, uncontrollable intrusions of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions).
3. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Follows an individuals exposure to some type of chronic or acute stressor
4. Etiology of Anxiety and Anxiety-Related Disorders
  1. Biological Factors
    1. Concordance rate: indicates the percentage of twin pairs or other pairs of relatives who exhibit the same disorder
  2. Conditioning and Learning
    1. Anxiety responses may be acquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning
  3. Cognitive Factors
    1. Certain styles of thinking make some people particularly vulnerable to anxiety disorders
  4. Stress
Dissociative Disorders
1. A class of disorders in which people lose contact with portions of their consciousness or memory, resulting in disruptions in their sense of identity
2. Dissociative Amnesia: A sudden loss of memory for important personal information that is too extensive to be due to normal forgetting
  1. Dissociative fugue: people lose their memory for their life and experiences, along with their sense of personal identity
3. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): Involves the coexistence in one person of two or more largely complete, and usually very different, personalities (Multiple Personalities Disorder)
Mood Disorders
1. Bipolar II Disorder: Individuals suffer from episodes of major depression along with hypomania in which their change in mood and behaviour is less severe than those seen in full mania
  1. Affect about 1% of North American population
2. Cyclothymic Disorder: When they exhibit chronic but relatively mild symptoms of bipolar disturbance
3. Diversity
  1. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): A type of depression that follows a seasonal pattern
    1. 3% of Canadians
  2. Postpartum Depression: A type of depression that sometimes occurs after childbirth
4. Suicide
  1. second leading cause of death in ages 15-34
5. Etiology
  1. Genetic Vulnerability
    1. Heredity can create a predisposition to mood disorders
  2. Biological and Neurochemical Factors
    1. Heredity may influence susceptibility to mood disorders by creating a predisposition toward certain types of neurochemical abnormalities in the brain
  3. Hormonal Factors
  4. Dispositional Factors
    1. The role of personality factors in eliciting and maintaining depression
  5. Interpersonal Roots
    1. Behavioural approaches to understanding depression emphasize how inadequate social skills put people on the road to depressive disorders
  6. Sports Concussions
  7. Precipitating Stress
Schizophrenia
1. A disorder marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, negative symptoms and deterioration of adaptive behaviour
  1. 1% of population may suffer from Schizophrenia
2. General Symptoms
  1. Delusions and Irrational Thoughts
    1. Delusions: False beliefs that are maintained even though they clearly are out of touch with reality
  2. Deterioration of Adaptive Behaviour
  3. Hallucinations: Sensory perceptions that occur in the absence of a real, external stimulus or are gross distortions of perceptual input
  4. Disturbed Emotions
  5. Positive Versus Negative Symptoms
    1. Negative Symptoms: Involve behavioural deficits, such as flattened emotions, social withdrawal, apathy, impaired attention, and poverty of speech
    2. Positive Symptoms: Involve behavioural excesses or peculiarities, such as hallucinations, delusions, bizarre behaviour, and wild flights of ideas
3. Course and Outcome
  1. Usually emerges during adolescence or early adulthood
  2. Emergence of Schizo is usually insidious and gradual
  3. 20% of those suffering from Schizo enjoy a full recovery
4. Etiology
  1. Genetic Vulnerability
    1. Hereditary factors play a role
  2. Neurochemical Factors
  3. Structural Abnormalities in the Brain
  4. Neurodevelopmental Hypothesis
    1. Caused in part by various disruptions in the normal maturational processes of the brain before or at birth
  5. Expressed Emotion (EE): The degree to which a relative of schizophrenic patient displays highly critical or emotionally overinvolved attitudes toward the patient
  6. Precipitating Stress
Personality Disorders
1. A class of disorders marked by extreme, inflexible personality traits that cause subjective distress or impaired social and occupational functioning
2. 3 clusters
  1. Anxious/Fearful
  2. Odd/Eccentric
  3. Dramtic/Impulsive
3. Diagnostic Problems
  1. Personality disorders overlap with other categories of disorders and with each other
4. Antisocial Personality Disorder
  1. Description
    1. Marked by impulsive, callous, manipulative, aggressive, and irresponsible behaviour that reflects a failure to accept social norms
    2. More frequent in males than females
      1. Found in 3-6% of males and 1% of females
  2. Etiology
    1. Genetic predisposition toward these disorders
Disorders of Childhood
1. 20% of the children and youth in Canada will suffer from mental illnesses
2. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Refers to a developmental disorder characterized by social and emotional deficits, along with repetitive and stereotypic behaviours, interests and activities
  1. Etiology
    1. Biological dysfunctions
  2. Research has failed to find an association between vaccinations and the development of autism
Psychological Disorders and the Law
1. Insanity
  1. M'Naghten Rule: Insanity exists when a mental disorder makes a person unable to distinguish right from wrong
  2. Automatism: The idea that you should not be held responsible if you had no control over your behaviour

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Psychological Disorders

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	Created by Darby Milman about 7 years ago