Psychological Disorders

Unit 14
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Introduction Psychological Disorders
Anxiety Disorders
Mood Disorders
Personality Disorders
Dissociative Disorders
Somotoform Disorders
Psychotic Disorders
Introduction to Psychological
Disorders
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• Psychological Disorder
– A harmful dysfunction in which behavior is
judged to be
• Atypical
• Disturbing
• Maladaptive
• and Unjustifiable
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Causes

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 Historical Perspective
• Perceived Causes
– Movements of the sun or moon.
• Full moon == lunacy
– Evil spirits
• Ancient Treatments
– Exorcism, caged like animals, beaten, burned,
castrated, mutilated, blood replaced with
animal’s blood.
 Biological Perspective
• “The Medical Model”
– Mental disorders as physical
– Brain abnormalities
– Chemical imbalances
– Birth difficulties
– High heritability
 Psychodynamic perspective
• Sigmund Freud
• Unconscious conflicts and drives
• Early childhood trauma
• Therapy helps person become aware of
underlying conflicts
• Cognitive Perspective • Behavioral
Perspective
– Conscious thoughts
– Learned maladaptive
– Learned maladaptive patterns of behavior
thought patterns cause cause mental disorder
mental disorders
 Socio-Cultural Perspective
• Larger culture important to development of
mental disorders

• Supporting evidence from “culture-bound

syndromes”
– Anorexia and Bulimia in North America and
Western Europe
 • Bio-Psycho-Social
Perspective
– assumes that
Biological biological,
sociocultural, and
psychological factors
combine and interact to
produce psychological
Psychological Sociological disorders

Psychological disorder
 Multiple-Causation
• Predisposing causes • Precipitating causes
– In place before onset – Immediate events that
– Make person bring on the disorder
susceptible – Loss
– Inherited characteristics – Perceived threat
– Learned beliefs – When predisposition
– Sociocultural beliefs high, precipitating event
may be small
• Maintaining causes
– Consequences of the disorder keep disorder going once it begins
• Sometimes positive consequences, like extra attention from friends,
family & care professionals
• Sometimes negative consequences, like loss of friends, stigma, etc
 Classifying Disorders
• DSM-IV
– Neurotic disorders
• Disorders that are distressing, but still allow one to
function in society
– Psychotic disorders
• A person loses contact with reality, experiencing
irrational ideas and distorted perceptions
Rates of Psychological Disorders
• 2.1 million inpatient admissions to US
hospitals and psychiatric units.
• Another 2.4 million have sought outpatient
care.
• 15% of Americans are judged by health care
professionals as needing some psychiatric
help in the course of a year.
Rates of Psychological Disorders
• No known culture is free of schizophrenia
and depression.

• WHO reports that 400 million worldwide

suffer from a psychological disorder.

• Incidence of serious psychological disorders

is doubly high among those below the
poverty line.
Rates of Psychological Disorders
• 75% of people who will ever have a
psychological disorder experience the first
symptoms by age 24.
– Antisocial personality disorder and phobias
appear by a median age of 8 and 10.
Anxiety Disorders

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• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
– A person is continually tense, apprehensive,
and in a state of autonomic nervous system
arousal
anxiety

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• Panic Disorder
– Anxiety disorder marked by minutes-long
episode of intense dread in which a person
experiences terror and accompanying chest
pain, choking, or other frightening sensations

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• Phobias
– A persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a
specific object or situation.
phobias

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 100
Percentage 90
of people 80
surveyed 70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Snakes Being Mice Flying Being Spiders Thunder Being Dogs Driving Being Cats
in high, on an closed in, and and alone a car In a
exposed airplane in a insects lightning In a crowd
places small house of people
place at night

Afraid of it Bothers slightly Not at all afraid of it

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
– Characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts
(obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions)
– Obsessions
• Concern with dirt, germs of toxins - 40%
• Something terrible happening (fire, death, etc) – 24%
• Symmetry, order, or exactness – 85%
– Compulsions
• Excessive hand washing/ cleaning – 85%
• Repeating rituals – 51%
• Checking doors, locks, etc – 46%
 Explaining Anxiety Disorders
• Learning Perspective • Biological Perspective
– Fear Conditioning – Evolution/ Natural
Selection
– Stimulus
Generalizations – Genes/ temperament

– Reinforcement – Physiology

– Observational – anterior cingulate

Learning cortex

– amygdala
Dissociative and Personality
Disorders
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 Personality Disorders
• Disorders characterized by inflexible and
enduring behavior patterns that impair
social functioning.
– Histrionic Personality Disorder
– Narcissistic Personality Disorder
– Borderline Personality Disorder
– Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Histrionic Personality Disorder
– characterized by a pattern of excessive
emotionality and attention-seeking, including
an excessive need for approval and
inappropriate seductiveness, usually beginning
in early adulthood.

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• Narcissistic Personality Disorder
– "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for
admiration, and a lack of empathy."

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• Borderline Personality Disorder
– "a pervasive pattern of instability of
interpersonal relationships, self-image and
affects, as well as marked impulsivity,
beginning by early adulthood and present in a
variety of contexts."

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• Antisocial Personality Disorder
– "The essential feature for the diagnosis is a
pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation
of, the rights of others that begins in childhood
or early adolescence and continues into
adulthood."

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 Dissociative Disorders

• Dissociative Amnesia
– Loss of memory.
– Selective memory loss often brought on by
extreme stress
• Dissociative Fugue
– Flight from one’s home & identity accompanies
amnesia
• Skeptics wonder if it’s strategic
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 Dissociative Disorders
• Dissociative Identity Disorder
– Person exhibits two or more distinct and
alternating personalities (dba. Multiple-Personality
Disorder)
– Supporting evidence
• Distinct brain & body states, handedness changes, different
vision
– Contrary evidence
• Increasing diagnoses, increasing personalities
 Somotoform Disorders
• Physical disorders which have
psychological causes.

– Hypochondria

– Conversion Reactions
hypochondria

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Mood Disorders

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 Suicide
• More than 32,000 suicides a year;
425,000 self-inflicted injuries per year
• 40-50% of college students have thought about
suicide.
15% have attempted suicide.
• 1 out of 80 college students is the survivor of a
loved one’s suicide.
• 78% of all suicides are by men
– Firearms are most common for men; poison for women
• 17% of high school students have thought about suicide
• 2nd leading cause of death for 25-34 year-olds;
3rd leading cause of death for 15-24 year-olds
 Common Characteristics
1. Unendurable 5. An attempt to end
psychological pain consciousness

2. Frustrated 6. Constrictions of
psychological need options

3. The search for a 7. Ambivalence

solution
8. Communication of
4. Helplessness and intent (80%)
Hopelessness
9. Departure

10. Lifelong coping

patterns
 Warning Signs of Suicide
• Talking about suicide • Visiting or calling
• Statements about people that one cares
hopelessness, about but hasn’t
helplessness, or communicated with
worthlessness recently
• Preoccupation with • Making arrangements;
death setting one’s affairs in
order
• Suddenly happier,
calmer • Giving things away
• Loss of interest in
things one cares about 43
 Mood Disorders
• Major Depressive • Prevalence:
Disorder 10-25% chance for women;
5-12% for men.

– A person, for no • Median age of onset: 25

apparent reason,
experiences two or more • Average Duration: 9
weeks of depressed months
moods, feelings of
worthlessness, and • 70% recurrence w/i 5 yrs;
diminished interest or 80% chance w/i 8 yrs
pleasure in most • 76% of patients respond to
activities anti-depressants
 Mood Disorders
• Bipolar Disorder
– Major depression is sometimes followed by a manic
episode: hyperactive, wildly optimistic state
– dba. Manic Depressive

Depressed state Manic state Depressed state

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 Explaining Mood Disorders
• Biological Perspective • Social-Cognitive
– Genetic influences Perspective
• 50% chance twin will have
similar mood disorder – Negative thoughts feed
– The Brain negative moods
• High norepinephrine
during manic state; low – Negative mood feeds
norepinephrine during negative thoughts
depression
• Low serotonin during
depression
• Smaller frontal lobes in
depressed people
Schizophrenia

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 Psychotic Disorders
• Schizophrenia
– Symptoms
• Disorganized thinking
• Disturbed perceptions
• Inappropriate emotions and actions
– Types
• Positive & Negative
• Chronic & Acute
 Compare to Infantile Autism
• Social isolation
• Stereotyped behaviors
• Resistance to any change
• Abnormal responses to sensory stimuli
• Insensitivity to pain
• Inappropriate emotional expression
• Disturbances of movement
• Poor development of speech
• Specific, limited intellectual problems
 Psychotic Disorders
Schizophrenia
Subtypes of Schizophrenia

Paranoid: Preoccupation with delusions or hallucinations

Disorganized: Disorganized speech or behavior, or flat or inappropriate

emotion

Catatonic: Immobility (or excessive, purposeless movement),

extreme negativism, and/or parrotlike repeating of
another’s speech or movements

Undifferentiated Schizophrenia symptoms without fitting one of the

or residual: above types
 Understanding Schizophrenia
• Brain abnormalities
– Dopamine overactivity
• More receptors; extra dopamine can induce (ie
cocaine)
– Brain anatomy
• Low frontal lobe activity
• Spaces in brain filled with fluid
• Smaller than average thalamus
 Understanding Schizophrenia
• Genetic factors
– 1 in 100 chance of developing schizophrenia.
– 1 in 10 if parent or sibling developed.
– 1 in 2 if identical twin develops it.