Perspectives on Psychological Disorders

1. Perspectives on Psychological Disorders • Society: Behavior is abnormal when it does not conform to the existing social order. • Individual: One’s own sense of personal well-being determines normality. • Mental-health professional: Personality and degree of personal discomfort and life functioning determine normality.

2. Approaches to Psychological Disorders • biological model: Disorders have a biochemical or physiological basis. • psychoanalytic model: Disorders result from unconscious internal conflicts. • cognitive-behavioral model: Disorders result from learning maladaptive ways of thinking and behaving.

3. Approaches to Psychological Disorders • diathesis-stress model: People biologically predisposed to a mental disorder (diathesis) will tend to exhibit that disorder when particularly affected by stress. • systems approach: Biological, psychological, and social risk factors combine to produce disorders.

4. Diagnostic & Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) • A publication of the American Psychiatric Association that classifies over 230 psychological disorders into 16 categories. • The most widely used classification of psychological disorders.

5. Diagnostic Categories of DSM-IV

6. Diagnostic Categories of DSM-IV

7. Mood Disorders Disturbances in mood or prolonged emotional state. • depression • mania • bipolar disorder

8. Depression • A mood disorder characterized by overwhelming feelings of sadness, • lack of interest in activities, • and perhaps excessive guilt or feelings of worthlessness.

9. Mania • A mood disorder characterized by euphoric states, • extreme physical activity, • excessive talkativeness, • distractedness, • and sometimes grandiosity.

10. Bipolar Disorder • A mood disorder in which periods of mania and depression alternate, sometimes with periods of normal mood intervening.

11. Causes of Mood Disorders • Most psychologists now believe that mood disorders result from a combination of • biological factors, • psychological factors, • and social factors.

12. Biological Factors • Genetics appears to play a role in the development of mood disorders. • The strongest evidence for the role of genetics comes from twin studies. • Certain chemical imbalances in the brain have been linked to mood disorders.

13. Psychological Factors • Cognitive distortions may lead to the development of mood disorders. • cognitive distortions: An illogical and maladaptive response to early negative life events that leads to feelings of incompetence and unworthiness that are reactivated whenever a new situation arises that resembles the original events.

14. Types of Illogical Thinking arbitrary inference selective abstraction overgeneralization magnification and minimization

15. Social Factors • Difficulties in interpersonal relationships may lead to mood disorders. • The link between depression and troubled relationships may explain why women are more likely to suffer from depression--women tend to be more relationship-oriented than men.

16. Gender, Race, & Suicide

17. Anxiety Disorders Disorders in which anxiety is a characteristic feature or the avoidance of anxiety seems to motivate abnormal behavior. • phobias • panic disorder • generalized anxiety disorder • obsessive-compulsive disorder

18. Types of Phobias • specific: intense, paralyzing fear of some object or thing • social: excessive, inappropriate fears connected with social situations or performances in front of other people • agoraphobia: involves multiple, intense fear of crowds, public places, and other situations that require separation from a source of security

19. Panic Disorder • An anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent panic attacks. • panic attack: A sudden, unpredictable, and overwhelming experience of intense fear or terror without any reasonable cause.

20. Generalized Anxiety Disorder • An anxiety disorder characterized by prolonged vague but intense fears that are not attached to any particular object or circumstance.

21. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder • An anxiety disorder in which a person feels driven to think disturbing thoughts (obsessions) and/or to perform senseless rituals (compulsions).

22. Causes of Anxiety Disorders • prepared responses: responses that evolution has made us biologically predisposed to acquire through learning • not feeling in control of one’s life • may be caused by an inherited predisposition • internal psychological conflict

23. Psychosomatic vs. Somatoform • psychosomatic: Disorders in which there is REAL physical illness that is largely caused by psychological factors such as stress and anxiety. • somatoform: Disorders in which there is an APPARENT physical illness for which there is no organic basis.

24. Somatoform Disorders • somatization disorder • conversion disorder • hypochondriasis • body dysmorphic disorder

25. Somatization Disorder • A somatoform disorder characterized by recurrent vague somatic complaints without a physical cause.

26. Conversion Disorder • Somatoform disorders in which a dramatic specific disability has no physical cause but instead seems related to psychological problems.

27. Hypochondriasis • A somatoform disorder in which a person interprets insignificant symptoms as signs of serious illness in the absence of any organic evidence of such illness.