Exam 5 Study Guide PDF

**Exam 5 Study Guide** **Health Psychology-Goals:** Prevent illness, promote good health, Support treatment & investigate psychological correlates of health **Stressors:** Specific events or chronic pressures that place demands on a person or threaten the person's well-being. **Chronic Stress:**...

**Exam 5 Study Guide** **Health Psychology-Goals:** Prevent illness, promote good health, Support treatment & investigate psychological correlates of health **Stressors:** Specific events or chronic pressures that place demands on a person or threaten the person's well-being. **Chronic Stress:** Sources of stress that occur continuously or repeatedly, effects can accumulate and be long-lasting, often associated with the environment **Perceived control:** over stressful events can be related to more effective coping. Perceptions of control must be realistic to be adaptive. **Physical Stress Reactions:** Stressors can cause hormones (glucocorticoids) to flood the brain wearing down the immune system and making it less able to fight invaders. **Fight-or-flight response:** Emotional and physiological reaction to an emergency that increases readiness for action. **HPA axis:** Hypothalamus Releasing factor = Pituitary gland = ACTH (through blood) = Adrenal gland = Cortisol & Catecholamines **General Adaptation Syndrome:** Three-stage physiological stress response that appears when stressor is encountered. GAS is non-specific and does not vary across stressors. Alarm phase: Rapid mobilization, Resistance phase: Adaption and coping & Exhaustion phase: Collapse **Stress effects on health and aging:** Pessimistic adult men are twice as likely to develop heart disease over 10-year period **How Stress Effects Cardiovascular Health:** Stress may lead to high blood pressure, which can pose a risk for heart attack and stroke. **Type A:** Time urgency & competitiveness not associated with poor health outcomes. Negative emotions, anger, aggressive reactivity are. High levels of hostility increase chance of all disease (cancer). **Burnout:** A state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. Created by long-term involvement in an emotionally demanding situation. Accompanied by lowered performance and motivation. **Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD**): Disorder characterized by chronic physical arousal, recurrent unwanted thoughts or images of the trauma, and avoidance of things that call the traumatic event to mind **Mental disorder:** Persistent disturbance or dysfunction in behavior, thoughts, or emotions that causes significant distress or impairment **Dangers of Labeling and Diagnosis:** Stigmas are likely attached to labeling people with psychological disorders. Roughly 60% of sufferers do not seek treatment. Education does not dispel the stigma. May result in unnecessary incarceration. May lead to low self-esteem. **Generalized Anxiety Disorder:** Disorder characterized by chronic excessive worry accompanied by three or more of the following symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, concentration problems, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbance **Specific Phobia:** Disorder that involves an irrational fear of a particular object or situation that markedly interferes with an individual's ability to function **Social Anxiety Disorder:** (Social phobia) Disorder that involves an irrational fear of being publicly humiliated or embarrassed **Panic Disorder:** Disorder characterized by the sudden occurrence of multiple psychological and physiological symptoms that contribute to a feeling of stark terror; panic attacks **Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:** Disorder in which repetitive, intrusive, thoughts (obsessions) and ritualistic behaviors (compulsions) designed to fend off those thoughts interfere significantly with an individual's functioning **Persistent Depressive disorder (Dysthymia):** Similar symptoms as in depression but less severe and persisting for at least 2 years **Helplessness theory:** Idea that individuals who are prone to depression automatically attribute negative experiences to causes that are internal, stable, and global **Cognitive Model:** Negative schema developed in depressed people through combination of genetic vulnerability and negative early life experiences **Disorder:** Unstable emotional condition characterized by cycles of abnormal, persistent high mood (mania) and low mood (depression). One of the highest heritability rates. **Bipolar I (Mania):** lasting at least 1 week (or any duration if hospitalization is necessary) **Cyclothymic Disorder:** Frequent periods of persistent high mood that cycle with periods of depressive symptoms. But do not meet criteria for a major depressive episode. **Schizophrenia:** Characterized by Profound disruption of basic psychological processes. Distorted perception of reality. Altered or blunted emotion. Disturbances in thought, motivation, and behavior. Occurs in about 1% of the population; rarely develops before adolescence **Positive Symptoms:** Delusions, Hallucinations, Disorganized speech, Grossly disorganized behavior, including abnormal motor behaviors (Catatonia) **Negative Symptoms:** are deficits or disruptions to normal emotions and behavior and include: Emotional and social withdrawal, Apathy, Poverty of speech, other indications of the absence or insufficiency of normal behavior, motivation, and emotion **Cognitive Symptoms:** Deficits in cognitive abilities and thought, Executive functioning, Attention, Working Memory **Biological Factors:** High heritability, Prenatal environment, Dopamine hypothesis: Idea that schizophrenia involves an excess of dopamine activity, Neuroimaging has revealed enlarged ventricles and progressive tissue loss in many cases of schizophrenia. **Psychological Factors:** First episode often preceded by environmental stress. Disturbed family environment may affect development and recovery of schizophrenia **Personality Disorders:** Inflexible, maladaptive pattern of thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal functioning. Stable over time and across situations. Deviate from the expectations of the individual's culture