Psychology: Anxiety Disorders and Trauma

Anxiety Disorders

• Panic disorder: panic attack, sympathetic activation
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): obsessions, compulsions, unwanted and irrational thoughts (e.g., COVID- washing hands for 20 seconds, following a specific routine)

Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): flashbacks, reliving traumatic experiences, avoidance of stimuli (e.g., 9/11, sexual assault, war, divorced parents, childhood illness)
• Acute Stress Disorder: lasts up to a month, traumatic car accident, reliving experiences

Somatic Symptom Disorders

• Somatic Symptom Disorder: preoccupation with a symptom (e.g., his knee)
• Illness Anxiety Disorder: anxiety about having a disease (e.g., hypochondriac, "I think I might have cancer")
• Conversion Disorder: psychological trauma converted to physical symptoms (e.g., psychological event shut down the brain, becoming blind after witnessing a traumatic event)
• Factitious Disorder: lying to be treated as sick, seeking attention and sympathy (e.g., making up a child's illness)
• Factitious Disorder by Proxy: lying that someone else is sick, seeking attention and sympathy (e.g., making up a child's illness)

Bipolar Disorder

• Bipolar I: mania and depression, swinging from mania to depression (more severe, may not take medication due to manic episodes)
• Bipolar II: depression, less manic than bipolar I (more likely to take medication due to mania, better outcomes)
• Cyclothymia: less mania and less depression

Depressive Disorder

• Major Depressive Disorder: must have anhedonia (loss of interest or pleasure), low self-esteem

Organizations

• Normative Organizations: shared goals, no transactional ties (e.g., religious group, fraternity)
• Coercive Organizations: individuals have no choice in being part of the group (e.g., Max Weber's Theory)
• McDonaldization: efficiency, calculability, predictability, control (e.g., Iron Law of Oligarchy, all organizations become oligarchies)

Self-Presentation and Interacting with Others

• Expressing and detecting emotion
• The role of gender in the expression and detection of emotion
• The role of culture in the expression and detection of emotion

Presentation of Self

• Impression management: managing impressions with different people
• Front stage (public) vs. back stage self (dramaturgical approach)
• Verbal and nonverbal communication
• Animal signals and communication

Social Behavior

• Attraction: proximity, sharing about oneself, physical shape, cultural style
• Aggression: men more acceptable to be aggressive, testosterone linked to aggression
• Attachment: secure attachment, attachment style
• Altruism: doing something for others, even at one's own expense

General Adaptation Syndrome

• Alarm: stress response
• Resistance: coping with stress
• Exhaustion: chronic stress response

Cortisol

• Starvation response: increases hunger, blood sugar, fat deposition
• Tiredness: conserve energy, decrease production of white blood cells
• Stress impedes memory
• Cushing's syndrome: high cortisol, weight gain, tiredness, fat deposition
• Socioeconomic: high chronic stress, financial struggles

Neurotransmitters

• GABA: inhibitory, decreases activity, shuts down, depresses cognitive process
• Acetylcholine: CNS, PNS, muscle contraction, treatment for paralysis
• Epinephrine and Norepinephrine: adrenaline
• Dopamine: smooth movement, Parkinson's disease, low dopamine
• Serotonin: mood, depression, SRI, dream, sleep eating
• Glycine: inhibitory, amino acid
• Glutamate: excitatory, amino acid
• Endorphins: pain, exercise, counteracts cortisol

Myelin Sheath

• CNS: spinal cord and brain, oligodendrocytes, myelination, no regeneration
• PNS: everything else, Schwann's cells, myelination, limited regeneration

Brain Regions and Emotion

• Limbic system: hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus
• Hypothalamus: controlling endocrine system
• Thalamus: sensory relay station
• Amygdala: emotion
• Hippocampus: memory

Stress

• Difficulty encountered in life, appraisal
• Distress: negative stress, I don't have a car or a home
• Eustress: positive stress, I figure out where to donate money because I'm a millionaire
• Appraisal: depends on one's interpretation of the event
• Types of stress: cataclysmic, personal, chronic, acute
• Ambient stressor: noise pollution, low importance
• Major life event: high importance, cancer
• Appraisal: primary, secondary, past behavior, attitudes, subjective norms, intentions, willingness to engage in behavior