LESSON 6: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

The importance of CONTEXT: Age, Culture, Place in the World.

WHAT IS ABNORMALITY?
- How do psychologists decide when people are really mentally ill and not just a little odd?
- What is abnormal mean?
- Abnormal compared to what?
- Psychology- study of abnormal psychology
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
- How has mental illness been explained in the past?
- 3000 B.C.E- archeologists have found human skulls with holes
- Trepanning- process- releasing the demons possessing the poor victim
- Ancient peoples might well have assumed- possessed with evil spirits
- Mental illness as demonic possession
- Hippocrates (460-377 BCE) challenged the idea of possession- believe that mental illness
is a result of the imbalance of body vital fluids
- Middle Age- Roman Catholicism believed of possession treatment is exorcism- formal
casting out of the demon through a religion ritual
- During Renaissance- witchcraft- mentally ill were considered as witches.

WHAT IS ABNORMAL?
Some possible criteria
1. Statistical Infrequency
 How common or rare
 Frequency occurring behavior is normal while rare
behavior is abnormal
 How about too much happiness? Or too much
sadness?
 This criterion does not work with intelligence. People
with high intelligence are highly respectful.
 The Bell Curve

2. Social Norm Deviance or Deviation from the Norm

 What does the society think about it?
 Something that goes against the norms or standards of the society
 For instance, nudity in a society that does not permit it

3. Subjective Discomfort
 When a person is experiencing a great deal of subjective discomfort- emotional
distress while engaging in a particular behavior, doesn’t sleep for 1 week
 For instance, the discomfort of a person when in public places
 What if distress is caused by death of a loved one?

4. Inability to function normally

 Behavior that does not allow a person to fit into society- also called maladaptive
Maladaptive – meaning that the person finds it hard to adapt to the demands of day
to day living
5. The Sociocultural perspective
 What is normal in one culture may be abnormal in another
 Cultural relativity- the need to consider the unique characteristics of a culture in
which a person with a disorder was nurtured to be able to correctly diagnose and treat
disorder
So, what is an abnormal behavior?
At least 2 of the following
1. Is the behavior unusual, such as severe panic when faced with a stranger or being
severely depressed in the absence of any stressful life situations?
2. Does the behavior go against social norms?
3. Does the behavior cause the person significant subjective discomfort?
4. Does the person dangerous to self or others?
Models of Abnormality
1. Biological Model
 That disorder has medical causes
 That anxiety, depression among others are caused by chemical imbalance, genetic
problems, brain damage and dysfunction

2. The Psychological Models

a. Psychodynamic view: the hiding problems
o By Freud and his followers
o Disordered behavior is a result of repressing one’s threatening thoughts,
memories and concerns in the unconscious mind
o Repressed issues try to re-surface, a disordered develops as a way of keeping
the thoughts repressed

b. Behaviorism: learning problems

o Disordered behavior is a learned behavior
o For instance: fear of something as learned behavior

c. Cognitive Perspective: thinking problem

o See abnormal behavior as illogical patterns

d. Biopsychological perspective: all of the above

o Interactive of genetic and psychological factors
DSM of Mental Disorder
- Describes approximately 250 different psychological disorders
FORUM QUESTION:

Given the various Psychological disorders, what is one disorder that gets most of
your attention and why?

ANXIETY DISORDERS: what, Me worry?

- What are the different types of anxiety disorders, symptoms and causes?
- Anxiety as excessive and unrealistic
- If final exams- not study- excessive anxiety but realistic

1. Phobia
- An irrational, persistent fear of something

a. hea Phobias (Social Anxiety Disorder)

 Involve a fear of interacting with others or being in a social situation and are some
of the most common phobia people experience
 Afraid of being evaluated by others. So, fear to avoid situations that could lead to
something embarrassing and humiliating

b. Specific Phobia
 Claustrophobia – fear of closed spaces
 Acrophobia- fear of heights

c. Agoraphobia
 Fear of close spaces when escaped is impossible
 Avoids not only crowds but bridges, travelling in car or and avoid any of these
that lead to extreme anxiety
 Make home a prison

2. Panic Disorder
o Sudden onset of extreme panic with various physical symptoms: racing heart,
rapid breathing, a sensitive of being out of the body, * hearing and vision,
sweating and dry mouth
o They think they have heart attack- nut symptoms is not caused by physical
disorder
o The attack happens without warning and quite suddenly
o Last within 10 to 15 minutes
o Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia
o Public place prevents the person from going out into unfamiliar or
exposed places

3. Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder

o A thought running through their heal that just won’t go away- like a song gets
stuck in one’s mind
o If that particular thought gets one’s anxiety- it becomes basis for an OCD
o Intruding thought just occur again and again and are followed by some repetitive,
ritualistic behavior
o For instance- a thought that one’s hands are dirty and so repeated hand washing
 4. Acute Stress Disorder
o Symptoms occur within 4 weeks of traumatic event and include anxiety,
dissociative symptoms (emotional numbness/lack of responsiveness, not being
aware of surroundings, dissociative amnesia) recurring nightmares, sleep
disturbance, problems in concentration

5. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

o When symptoms of ASD last for more than 1 month

6. Generalized Anxiety Disorders

o An anxiety that we cannot trace its source
o An excessive anxiety and worries occur more days than not for at least 6 months
o People with these disorders are plan worriers

MOOD DISORDERS: the effect of affect

- Affect means emotions
- Disturbance in emotion- also referred to as affective disorders
- Look at your range of emotions
- Mood that is extreme

1. Major Depression
- Exists without any external cause for sadness
- Fall at the far extreme of sadness.
- Depressed for most of the day, little or no pleasure in any activities, feel tired, have
trouble sleeping, or sleep too much, experiencing of worthlessness, have trouble
concentrating, may have thoughts of suicide

2. Bipolar Disorder
- Mood swings
- A swing from severe depression to manic episodes (excessive excitement, every and
elation)
- No external cause for the person in extremely happy or euphoric without any real cause
to be happy
Causes of Mood Disorders:
1. Psychodynamic
 Depressed is repressed anger originally aimed at parents or other authority figures
2. Behavioral
 Depression is linked to learned helplessness
3. Social Cognitive
 Distorted thinking and negative. Self-defeating thoughts
4. Biological
  Variation in neurotransmitter levels (serotonin, dopamine) or specific brain
activity, genes
Eating Disorder
- Anorexia Nervosa or often called Anorexia
 A person is reducing eating to the point that a weight loss of 15 percent below
expected body weight
- Bulimia Nervosa
 A condition in which a person develops a cycle of “binging” or overeating and
finds a way to vomit it out
 Researchers have found that people with these disorders are in culture with
concern of being thin

DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER
- A condition of a break, a dissociation, in consciousness, memory or person’s sense of
identity

1. Dissociative Amnesia
- An individual cannot remember personal information such as one’s own name or specific
personal events
- The cause is psychological
- Associated with a stressful or emotionally experience
- It can be loss of memory for only one small se** of time, or it can involve a total loss of
one’s past personal memories

2. Dissociative Fugue: Who Am I and How did I GET HERE?

- Fugere- Latin means flight
- When a person suddenly travels away from home and afterwards cannot remember the
trip or even personal information such as identity

3. Dissociative Identity Disorder

 a person experiences at least 2 or more distinct personalities

SCHIZOPHRENIA: ALTERED REALITY

 once known as dementia praecox, a Latin term meaning “out of one’s mind before
one’s time”
 Schizophrenia was renamed by Eugen Bluer – a Swiss psychiatrist; to better illustrate
the division (schizo) within the brain (phren) among thoughts, feelings and behavior
 Term means split mind
 Modern definition- a long- lasting psychotic disorder, inability to distinguish what is
real from fantasy, disturbance in thinking, emotions, behavior and perception.
Symptoms
1. Delusions – are false belief about the world that the person holds and that tend to remain
fixed and unshakable even in the face of evidence that disproves the delusions.
a. Delusions of persecution – people believe that others are trying to hurt them
b. Delusions of reference – believe that other people, like television characters,
even books are talking to them.
c. Delusion of influence – believe that they are being controlled by external forces
by aliens, cosmic forces
d. Delusions of Grandeur- believe that they are powerful people who can control
the world.
2. Hallucinations
 Involves the senses – sight and hearing, less on touch, smell and taste
 So, seeing things which are not real and hearing voices
3. Flat affect
 A condition in which the person shows little or no emotion
 Emotion can also be excessive or inappropriate, a person might laugh or express
sorrow inappropriately
Categories of Schizophrenia
1. Disorganized
Confused in speech, have vivid and frequent hallucinations and tend to have very
inappropriate affect, socially impaired, unable to engage in the daily rituals like bathing
etc
2. Catatonic
Less common. Very disturbed motor behavior, maintaining odd looking posture for hours
3. Paranoid
Suffer with hallucinations and delusions, common is auditory hallucinations and
delusions, typically persecution with, grandeur etc.

PERSONALITY DISORDER
Odd or Eccentric Types
Paranoid
- Extreme suspicion of others, mistrustful, often jealous
Schizoid
- Loners who are cool, distant, and unwillingly and unable to form close relationships with
others
Schizotypal
 - Difficulty in forming social relationships, odd and eccentric behavior, tendency to hole
magical beliefs, slightly increased risk of developing schizophrenia later on.
Dramatic or Erratic Types
Antisocial
- Lacking in conscience or morals; users and con artists who experience no regret or strong
emotions
Borderline
- Moody, unstable, lacking in a clear sense of identity, clinging to others.
Histrionic
- Tendency to overreact and use excessive emotions to draw attention from and manipulate
others; love to be the center of attention
Narcissistic
- Extremely vain and self-involved
Anxious or Fearful Types
Avoidant
- Fearful of social relationships, ten to avoid social contacts unless absolutely necessary
Dependentva
- Needy, want other to make decisions for them
Obsessive – Compulsive
- Controlling, focused on neatness and order to an extreme degree