PS101 Lecture Notes - Social Anxiety Disorder, Mood Disorder, Abnormal Psychology
Chapter 15: Psychological Disorders
Abnormal psychology
- The scientific study of psychological disorders
What is abnormal?
- Deviance: different behaviors, thoughts, and emotions from society’s normal
standards
- Distress: behaviors, ideas and emotions that cause distress
- Dysfunction: behavior that interferes with daily functioning
- Danger: dangerous to themselves or others
Personality disorders: when things go wrong
Personality disorder
- An inflexible pattern of inner experience and outward behavior that causes distress or
difficulty with daily functioning
Four Features - DSM-V
- Rigid, extreme, and distorted thinking patterns
- Problematic emotional response patterns
- Impulse control problems
- Significant interpersonal problems
Canadian Statistics
- Anxiety disorders (12%)
- Mood disorders (7%)
- Eating disorders (2.5%)
History of Psychological Disorders
Mental illness
- Neurosis: disorders causing personal distress and some impairment in functioning
- Not causing one to lose contact with reality or to violate important social
norms
- Psychosis: severe psychological disorders - sometimes requiring hospitalization
- Typically lose contact with reality, suffer delusions and/or hallucinations
- Seriously impaired ability to function in everyday life
DSM: diagnostic and statistical manual
MODELS OF ABNORMALITY
Approach
Causes of abnormal functioning
Neuroscience Approach
Structural or biochemical malfunctions in the brain
Psychodynamic Approach
Unconscious conflicts often rooted in childhood
Cognitive-Behavioral
Approach
Abnormal behaviors acquired through a tightly interwoven
mix of conditioning, modelling, and cognitive principles
Humanistic and Existential
Approach
Distorted views of self prevent personal growth or decision
making
Sociocultural Approaches
Societal, cultural, social, and family pressures or conflicts
Developmental
Psychopathology Approach
Early risk factors combined with poor resilience throughout
life stag
MOOD (AFFECTIVE DISORDERS)
- Moods or emotions that are extreme and unwarranted
Types (depressive/bipolar)
- Depression: a persistent, sad state in which life seems dark and its challenges
overwhelming
- Mania: a persistent state of euphoria or frenzied energy
- Major depressive disorder: characterized by a depressed mood that is significantly
disabling and is not caused by factors such as drugs or a general medical condition
- Bipolar disorder: periods of mania alternate with periods of depression
Depression
Depressive Episode Criteria
- Patient must exhibit 5 or more symptoms
- At least one must be: depressed mood and/or anhedonia (loss of pleasure)
- Sleep disturbance, appetite disturbance, fatigue, difficulty concentrating,
hopelessness, suicidal thoughts
- Must last for 2 weeks
What causes depression?
Biological factors
Genetic factors
- 67% concordance rate for identical twins
- 15% for fraternal twins
- Genetic predisposition to mood disorder
Neurotransmitters
- Underactivity of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin
Psychological Factors
Personality based vulnerability
- Psychodynamic view: early traumatic losses/rejections create vulnerability
- Humanistic factors: define self worth in terms of individual attainment; react more
strongly to failures; due to inadequacies; experiences of meaninglessness
Cognitive processes
- Depressive attributional pattern
- Success = factors outside self
- Negative outcomes = personal factors
- Plays role in learned helplessness
- Non depressed people attribute positive outcomes to themselves, and negative
outcomes to factors outside themselves
Learned helplessness theory
- Depression occurs when people expect that bad events will occur and they think that
they can’t cope with them
Negative thinking
- Cognitive triad: pattern of thinking in which individuals repeatedly interpret 1: their
experiences, 2: themselves, and 3: their futures, in negative ways that lead them to
feel depressed
- Automatic thoughts: specific upsetting thoughts that arise unbidden
Learning and Environmental Factors
Environmental factors
- Loss of reinforcement
- Depressions occurs
- Causes loss of social support
- Poor parenting
- Many stressful experiences
- Failure to develop good coping skills
- Failure to develop positive self concept
Bipolar Disorder
- A condition in which patients experience two radically different moods
- Extreme highs (mania) temporarily lose touch with reality
- Optimism is not just irrational, it is delusional
- May move quickly, talk rapidly and loudly, act impulsively, very energetic
- Extreme lows (major depression)
- Usually with relatively normal periods in between
- Characterized by mood swings with no external cause
- Duration within a mood can be several months
What causes bipolar disorder?
Biological
- Gene abnormalities
- Irregularities in ions that allow neurons to communicate
Other causes
- Stress plus biological predisposition
- Life events - striving, failures
Document Summary
Deviance: different behaviors, thoughts, and emotions from society"s normal standards. Distress: behaviors, ideas and emotions that cause distress. Dysfunction: behavior that interferes with daily functioning. An inflexible pattern of inner experience and outward behavior that causes distress or difficulty with daily functioning. Neurosis: disorders causing personal distress and some impairment in functioning. Not causing one to lose contact with reality or to violate important social norms. Psychosis: severe psychological disorders - sometimes requiring hospitalization. Typically lose contact with reality, suffer delusions and/or hallucinations. Seriously impaired ability to function in everyday life. Abnormal behaviors acquired through a tightly interwoven mix of conditioning, modelling, and cognitive principles. Distorted views of self prevent personal growth or decision making. Societal, cultural, social, and family pressures or conflicts. Early risk factors combined with poor resilience throughout life stag. Moods or emotions that are extreme and unwarranted. Depression: a persistent, sad state in which life seems dark and its challenges.
