6 Psychology Disorders

Defining Abnormality

• Abnormal behavior is defined as behavior that causes people to experience distress and prevents them from functioning in their daily lives
• Three ways to define abnormality: • Deviation from the average • Deviation from the ideal • Sense of personal discomfort • Inability to function effectively • Legal concept

Perspectives on Psychological Disorders

• The Diathesis-Stress Model suggests that a biological predisposition (diathesis) must combine with a stressful circumstance before a mental disorder is manifested
• The Systems Approach (Biopsychosocial Model) examines how biological risks, psychological stresses, and social pressures combine to produce psychological disorders

Mood Disorders

• Major depressive disorder: severe form of depression that interferes with concentration, decision-making, and sociability
• Symptoms: • Depressed mood most of the day, particularly in the morning • Loss of interest in normal activities and relationships • Fatigue or loss of energy almost every day • Feelings of worthlessness or guilt almost every day • Impaired concentration, indecisiveness • Insomnia or hypersomnia almost every day • Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities nearly every day • Restlessness or feeling slowed down • Recurring thoughts of death or suicide • Significant weight loss or gain
• Bipolar disorder: alternating periods of euphoric feelings of mania and periods of depression

Anxiety Disorders

• Occurrence of anxiety without an obvious external cause that affects daily functioning
• Types: • Phobic disorder or specific phobia: intense, irrational fears of specific objects or situations • Panic disorder: takes the form of panic attacks lasting from a few seconds to several hours • Generalized anxiety disorder: experience of long-term, persistent anxiety and worry (at least 6 months)
• Causes: • Genetic factors • Overactive autonomic nervous system • Biological causes • Environmental factors • Learned response to stress

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

• Characterized by obsessions or compulsions
• Symptoms: • Persistent anxiety-provoking thoughts and/or urges to perform repetitive, ritualistic behaviors to prevent or produce a situation

Somatic Symptom Disorders

• Psychological difficulties that take on a physical (somatic) form, but for which there is no medical cause
• Conversion disorder: actual physical disturbance, such as the inability to use a sensory organ, or the complete or partial inability to move limbs
• Cause is purely psychological

Dissociative Disorders

• Psychological dysfunction characterized by the separation of different facets of a person’s personality that are normally integrated
• Dissociative identity disorder (DID): Person displays characteristics of two or more distinct personalities
• Each personality has unique memories, behaviors, and relationships
• Only one personality is dominant at a time

DSM-V

• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)
• System devised by the American Psychiatric Association
• Used by most professionals to diagnose and classify abnormal behavior
• Benefits: • Provides a descriptive system • Allows communication between mental health professionals and theoretical approaches • Enables researchers to explore the causes of a problem • Provides a shorthand through which professionals can describe the behaviors that tend to occur together in an individual### Symptoms of Schizophrenia
• Negative symptoms:
  • Flat affect (a person's face does not move or they talk in a dull or monotonous voice)
  • Lack of pleasure in everyday life
  • Lack of ability to begin and sustain planned activities
  • Speaking little, even when forced to interact
• Cognitive symptoms:
  • Subtle and detected only when other tests are performed
  • Poor "executive functioning" (the ability to understand information and use it to make decisions)
  • Trouble focusing or paying attention
  • Problems with "working memory" (the ability to use information immediately after learning it)

Biological Causes of Schizophrenia

• Genetic factors
• Biochemical imbalance
• Dopamine hypothesis: some dopamine pathways are overactive in schizophrenia
• Structural abnormalities:
  • Signs of cerebral damage
  • Decreased brain weight
  • Reduced numbers of neurons in the prefrontal cortex
  • Decrease in volume of the limbic regions
  • Abnormalities in the thalamus
  • Enlarged ventricles or spaces in the brain

Schizophrenia: Situational Causes

• Emotional and communication patterns of the families of people with schizophrenia
• Expressed emotion: interaction style characterized by high levels of criticism, hostility, and emotional intrusiveness within a family

Personality Disorders

• Characterized by a set of inflexible, maladaptive behavior patterns that keep a person from functioning appropriately in society
• Antisocial personality disorder:
  • Lack of regard for the moral and ethical rules of society or the rights of others
  • Impulsive
  • Lack of guilt or anxiety about their wrongdoing
  • Manipulative
  • Deceptive
• Borderline personality disorder:
  • Problems regulating emotions and thoughts
  • Displaying impulsive and reckless behavior
  • Having unstable relationships with others
  • Difficulty developing a secure sense of who they are
• Narcissistic personality disorder:
  • Exaggerated sense of self-importance
  • Expect special treatment from others
  • Inability to experience empathy for others

Childhood Disorders

• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD):
  • Marked by inattention, impulsiveness, low tolerance for frustration, and a great deal of inappropriate activity
  • Believed to be produced by dysfunctions of the nervous system
• Autism spectrum disorder:
  • Severe developmental disability that impairs children's ability to communicate and relate to others

Other Disorders

• Psychoactive substance-use disorder
• Alcohol use disorders
• Eating disorders:
  • Anorexia nervosa
  • Bulimia
  • Binge-eating disorder
• Sexual disorders:
  • Sexual desire disorders
  • Sexual arousal disorders
  • Paraphilic disorders
• Neurocognitive disorders