Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto

1. Understanding Psychology6th EditionCharles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto PowerPoint Presentation by H. Lynn Bradman Metropolitan Community College ©Prentice Hall 2003

2. Chapter 12 Psychological Disorders ©Prentice Hall 2003

3. Perspectives on Psychological Disorders • Mental health professionals term a psychological disorder as a condition that either seriously impairs a person's ability to function in life or creates a high level of inner distress (or sometimes both). • This view does not mean that the category "disordered” is always easy to distinguish from the category “normal.” • In fact, it may be more accurate to view abnormal behavior as merely quantitatively different from normal behavior ©Prentice Hall 2003

4. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

5. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

6. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

7. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV • A publication of the American Psychiatric Association that classifies more than 230 psychological disorders into 16 categories. • The most widely used classification of psychological disorders. ©Prentice Hall 2003

8. Mood Disorders • Most people have a wide emotional range, but in some people with mood disorders, this range is greatly restricted. • They seem stuck at one or the other end of the emotional spectrum, or they may alternate back and forth between periods of mania and depression. ©Prentice Hall 2003

9. Mood Disorders • Disturbances in mood or prolonged emotional state. • Depression • Mania • Bipolar disorder ©Prentice Hall 2003

10. Depression • A mood disorder characterized by overwhelming feelings of sadness, • Lack of interest in activities, • And perhaps excessive guilt or feelings of worthlessness. ©Prentice Hall 2003

11. Depression • The DSM-IV distinguishes between two forms of clinical depression. • Major depressive disorder is an episode of intense sadness that may last for several months. • Dysthymia involves less intense sadness but persists with little relief for a period of two years or more. ©Prentice Hall 2003

12. Suicide • More women than men attempt suicide, but more men succeed. • Suicide rates among American adolescents and young adults have been rising, and suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents. • A common feeling associated with suicide is hopelessness, which is also typical of depression. ©Prentice Hall 2003

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14. Mania • A mood disorder characterized by euphoric states: • Extreme physical activity • Excessive talkativeness • Distractedness • Sometimes grandiosity. ©Prentice Hall 2003

15. Bipolar Disorder • A mood disorder in which periods of mania and depression alternate, sometimes with periods of normal mood intervening. ©Prentice Hall 2003

16. Causes of Mood Disorders • Most psychologists now believe that mood disorders result from a combination of: • Biological factors • Psychological factors • Social factors ©Prentice Hall 2003

17. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

18. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

19. Types of Illogical Thinking • Arbitrary inference • Selective abstraction • Overgeneralization • Magnification and minimization ©Prentice Hall 2003

20. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

21. Anxiety Disorders • Normal fear is caused by something identifiable, and the fear subsides with time. • In the case of anxiety disorder, however, either the person doesn't know why he or she is afraid, or the anxiety is inappropriate to the circumstances. ©Prentice Hall 2003

22. 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 ©Prentice Hall 2003

23. 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 ©Prentice Hall 2003

24. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

25. Generalized Anxiety Disorder • An anxiety disorder characterized by prolonged vague but intense fears that are not attached to any particular object or circumstance. ©Prentice Hall 2003

26. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder • An anxiety disorder in which a person feels driven to think disturbing thoughts (obsessions) and/or to perform senseless rituals (compulsions). ©Prentice Hall 2003

27. 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 ©Prentice Hall 2003

28. Psychosomatic and Somatoform Disorders • Psychosomatic disorders are illnesses that have a valid physical basis but are largely caused by psychological factors such as excessive stress and anxiety. • In contrast, somatoform disorders are characterized by physical symptoms without any identifiable physical cause. ©Prentice Hall 2003

29. Psychosomatic Versus 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

30. Somatoform Disorders • Somatization disorder • Conversion disorder • Hypochondriasis • Body dysmorphic disorder ©Prentice Hall 2003

31. Somatization Disorder • A somatoform disorder characterized by recurrent vague somatic complaints without a physical cause. ©Prentice Hall 2003

32. Conversion Disorder • Somatoform disorders in which a dramatic specific disability has no physical cause but instead seems related to psychological problems. ©Prentice Hall 2003

33. 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. ©Prentice Hall 2003

34. Body Dysmorphic Disorder • A somatoform disorder in which a person becomes so preoccupied with his or her imagined ugliness that normal life is impossible. ©Prentice Hall 2003

35. Dissociative Disorders • In dissociative disorders, some part of a person's personality or memory is separated from the rest. • Dissociative amnesia • Dissociative fugue • Dissociative identity disorder • Depersonalization disorder ©Prentice Hall 2003

36. Dissociative Amnesia • A dissociative disorder characterized by loss of memory for past events without organic cause. • Dissociative amnesia may result from an intolerable experience. • Dissociative amnesia is rare. ©Prentice Hall 2003

37. Dissociative Fugue • A dissociative disorder that involves flight from home and the assumption of a new identity, with amnesia for past identity and events. ©Prentice Hall 2003

38. Dissociative Identity Disorder • A dissociative disorder in which a person has several distinct personalities that emerge at different times. • Formerly known as multiple personality disorder. ©Prentice Hall 2003

39. Depersonalization Disorder • A dissociative disorder whose essential feature is that the person suddenly feels changed or different in a strange way. ©Prentice Hall 2003

40. Sexual and Gender-Identity Disorders • DSM-IV recognizes three main types of sexual disorders. • Sexual dysfunctions • Paraphilias • Gender-identity disorders ©Prentice Hall 2003

41. Sexual Dysfunctions • A loss or impairment of the ordinary physical responses of sexual function. • Erectile disorder: • The inability of a man to achieve or maintain an erection. • Female sexual arousal disorder: • The inability of a woman to become sexually aroused or to reach orgasm. ©Prentice Hall 2003

42. Sexual Dysfunctions • Sexual desire disorders: • Disorders in which the person lacks sexual interest or has an active distaste for sex. • Sexual arousal disorder: • Inability to achieve or sustain arousal until the end of intercourse in a person who is capable of experiencing sexual desire. ©Prentice Hall 2003

43. Sexual Dysfunctions • Orgasmic disorders: • Inability to reach orgasm in a person able to experience sexual desire and maintain arousal. • Premature ejaculation: • Inability of a man to inhibit orgasm as long as desired. • Vaginismus: • Involuntary muscle spasms in the outer part of the vagina that make intercourse impossible. ©Prentice Hall 2003

44. Paraphilias • Sexual disorders in which unconventional objects or situations cause sexual arousal. • Fetishism: • A paraphilia in which a nonhuman object is the preferred or exclusive method of achieving sexual excitement. ©Prentice Hall 2003

45. Paraphilias • Voyeurism: • Desire to watch others having sexual relations or to spy on nude people. • Exhibitionism: • Compulsion to expose one’s genitals in public to achieve sexual arousal. ©Prentice Hall 2003

46. Paraphilias • Frotteurism: • Compulsion to achieve sexual arousal by touching or rubbing against a nonconsenting person in public situations. • Transvestic fetishism: • Wearing the clothes of the opposite sex to achieve sexual gratification. ©Prentice Hall 2003

47. Paraphilias • Sexual sadism: • Obtaining sexual gratification from humiliating or physically harming a sex partner. • Sexual masochism: • Inability to enjoy sex without accompanying emotional or physical pain. • Pedophilia: • Desire to have sexual relations with children as the preferred or exclusive method of achieving sexual excitement. ©Prentice Hall 2003

48. Gender-Identity Disorders • Disorders that involve the desire to become, or the insistence that one really is, a member of the other biological sex. • Gender-identity disorder in children: • Rejection of one’s biological gender in childhood, along with the clothing and behavior society considers appropriate to that gender. ©Prentice Hall 2003

49. Personality Disorders • Disorders in which inflexible and maladaptive ways of thinking and behaving learned early in life cause distress to the person and/or conflicts with others. ©Prentice Hall 2003

50. Three Clusters of Personality Disorders • Cluster A: • Odd or eccentric behavior • Schizoid, paranoid • Cluster B: • Dramatic, emotional, or erratic behavior • Narcisstic, borderline, antisocial • Cluster C: • Anxious or fearful • Dependent, avoidant ©Prentice Hall 2003