Psychological Disorders

What patterns of thinking, perceiving, feeling, and behaving characterize schizophrenia?

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Psychological disorder

An ongoing pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are deviant, distressful, and or dysfunctional.

What are anxiety disorders and how do they differ from ordinary worries and fears?

Anxiety is classified as a psychological disorder only when it becomes distressing or persistent, or is characterized by maladaptive behaviors intended to reduce it.

What are dissociative disorders and why are they controversial?

Conditions in which conscious awareness seems to become separated from previous memories, thoughts and feelings. Skeptics note that dissociative identity disorder, commonly known as Multiple personality disorder, increased dramatically in the late twentieth century, that is is rarely found outside North America and that it may reflect role-playing by people who are vulnerable to therapists suggestions. Others view this disorder as a manifestation of feelings of anxiety, or as a response learned when behaviors are reinforced by reductions in feelings of anxiety.

What produces the thoughts and feelings that mark anxiety disorders?

Freud viewed anxiety disorders as the manifestation of mental energy associated with the discharge of repressed impulses. Psychologists working from the learning perspective view anxiety disorders as a product of fear conditioning, stimulus generalization, reinforcement of fearful behaviors, and observational learning of others' fear. Those working from the biological perspective consider the role that fears of life-threatening animals, objects, or situations played in natural selection and evolution, the genetic inheritance of a high level of emotional reactivity and abnormal responses in the brains fear circuits.

Why do some psychologists criticize the use of diagnostic labels?

Labels can create preconceptions that unfairly stigmatize people and can bias our perceptions of their past and present behavior. One label, "insanity" - used in some legal defenses - raises moral and ethical questions about how a society should treat people who have disorders and have committed crimes.

What perspectives can help us understand psychological disorders?

Medical Model - mental illnesses that can be diagnosed on the basis of their symptoms and cured through therapy. Bio psychosocial perspective assumes that disordered behavior arises from genetic predispositions and physiological states, inner psychological dynamics and social cultural circumstances

What are mood disorders, and what forms do they take?

Mood disorders are characterized by emotional extremes. A person with major depressive disorder experiences two or more weeks of seriously depressed moods and feelings of worthlessness, takes little interest in most activities and derives little pleasure from them. these feelings are not caused by drugs or a medical condition. People with the less common condition of bipolar disorder experience not only depression but also mania, episodes of hyperactive and wildly optimistic impulse behavior.

What are somatoform disorders?

Somatoform disorders present a somatic (bodily) symptom - some physiologically unexplained but genuinely felt ailment. With conversion disorder, anxiety appears converted to a physical symptom that has no reasonable neurological basis. Hypochondriasis is the more common interpretation of normal sensations as a dreaded disorder.

How and why do clinicians classify psychological disorders?

The DSM- IV -TR provides diagnostic labels and descriptions that aid mental health professionals by providing a common language and shared concepts for communications and research.

What causes mood disorders and what might explain the western world's rising incidence or depression among youth and young adults?

The biological perspective on depression focuses on genetic predispositions and on the abnormalities in brain structures and functions (including those found in neurotransmitter systems). The social-cognitive perspective examines the influence of cyclic self-defeating beliefs, learned helplessness, negative attributions and stressful experiences. The bio-psychosocial approach considers influences interacting on many levels. Increased rates of depression among young westerners may be due to the rise of individualism and the decline of commitment to the religion and family, but this is a correlational finding, so the cause-effect relationship is not yet clear.

How should we draw the line between normality and disorder?

When the behavior is deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional