Chapter 13 and 14: Abnormal Psychology and Treatment

Unconditional Positive Regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)-

A confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions. Application: the issue of someone else's behavior "making us angry." Anger is a common emotion, but very damaging in how it makes you feel (and its impact on how others feel.)

Illness Anxiety Disorder

A disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease. (Formerly called hypochondriasis.)

Client-Centered Therapy

A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine. Accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients' growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.) Application: a young woman who views herself as uninteresting and a poor conversationalist despite the fact that other people find her fascinating and quite engaging. Because her self-perceptions are not congruent with reality, she may experience poor self-esteem as a result. The client-centered approach focuses on providing unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuine support in order to help the client reach a more congruent view of herself.

Bipolar Disorder

A mood disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania. (Formerly called manic-depressive disorder.)

Major Depressive Disorder

A mood disorder in which a person experiences, in absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms, at least one of which must be either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure.

Mania

A mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state. Application: Reckless sexual encounters, these involved kissing a married man and making out with another guy in a public place when I was already in a long term relationship,

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)-

A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).

Meta-Analysis

A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies.

Psychosis

A psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions. Application: difficulty concentrating, anxiety, hallucinations, suspiciousness

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities. Formerly called multiple personality disorder. Application: At age 18, Kathy became very attached to her boyfriend but her parents forbid her to see him. Kathy then ran away from home to a new town. However, she could not find a job and her need of money drove her to prostitution. She began to call herself Nancy at this point.

Psychological Disorder

A syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior

Aversive Conditioning

A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol). Application: a person undergoing aversion therapy to stop smoking might receive an electrical shock every time they view an image of a cigarette.

Systematic Desensitization

A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias. Application: If a patient is afraid of spiders, his list of triggers may look like this: Thinking about going into the room where there are spiders., Standing near a sofa and moving toward the room., Reaching the door of the room., Thinking about the spider that is in the room., Unlocking the door of the room., Opening the door to the room., Entering the room., Turning on the light of the room., Walking inside the room., Closing the room door., Seeing a spider on the wall.

Insight Therapies

A variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functions by increasing a person's awareness of underlying motives and defenses. Application: A clinician trained in insight therapy helps his client to realize and break free of undesirable old patterns by examining how the man has reacted to certain situations in the past.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

An anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking.

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly (15 percent or more) underweight.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating (usually of high-calorie foods) with purging (by vomiting or laxative use), excessive exercise, or fasting.

Identify the positive and negative consequences of diagnostic labels (i.e. the Rosenhan Study).

Diagnostic labels can be interpreted in a both positive and negative way. If someone is given a diagnostic label, they can be discriminated based off of their diagnostic label and as well given a handicapped without exploring their true beauty. However, diagnostic labels can also help people of their mental disabilities and illnesses and they can be treated efficiently through therapy of psychiatrists and psychologists.

Dissociative Disorders

Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings. Application: Memory Loss, a sense of being detached from yourself

Active Listening

Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

Hallucination

False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.

Interpretation

In psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insights.

Resistance

In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.

Transference

In psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for the patient).

Compare and contrast different treatment formants (i.e. individual, group, family).

Individual treatment includes one-on-one therapy and encompasses multiple approaches such as psychoanalysis and cognitive-behavioral. Depending on the type of approach that is need for the treatment, individual treatment is mainly having a relationship between psychiatrist and patient, seeing what is wrong and what is needed in order to "cure" that illness. Group treatment is mainly mental health groups with those who are experiencing similar problems. Altogether, the psychiatrist and patients are having a one-on-one talk with multiple people in the room and seeing the similarities and differences within each person and finding what is doing good and what is not doing good. Family treatment is similar to group treatment, but it is with the patient's family. This is to ensure that the patient is living in a safe environment as well as seeing what is good and what is not so good when treating them at home. Biological treatment is mainly prescribing drugs in order to maintain the biological mental homeostasis within the body. This is usually paired up with a type of an in person therapy treatment and is also rarely used.

Discuss the intersection between psychology and the legal system (i.e. confidentiality, insanity defense).

Most crimes that have been conducted come from criminals who may have had a mental illness either previously or recently. In many court cases, both judges and jury have assessed the alleged criminal with an insanity label. It may be true and in some cases if the criminal is considered guilty, they are not only considered into a prison, but maybe a mental institute in order to treat the alleged criminal. Mental illnesses should be considered into court cases, however releasing the mental illness to the jury and audience, it should be more on a confidentiality level rather than a public level.

Describe prevention strategies that build resilience and promote competence.

Prevention strategies that build resilience and promote competence is mental health promotion and prevention week. It is a week where doctors and those with mental disability show what it is like to have a disability and shows how to notice the signs if someone has a disability. It promotes resilience and competence because it shows awareness and it shows prevention as well.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud's therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences-and the therapist's interpretations of them-released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

Evaluate the strengths and limitations of various approaches to explaining psychological disorders: medical model, psychoanalytic, humanistic, cognitive, biological, and sociocultural. (Include how these orientations influence therapeutic planning).

The medical model approach treats psychological illnesses as physical diseases and so a multitude of drugs can be prescribed. Psychiatrists and Psychologist use the medical model in order to treat certain psychological illnesses similar to how a doctor treats a broken leg. Psychoanalytic is based off of Freud's discrimination on the conscious and unconscious. In many cases, we see that psychoanalytic therapy is based off of trying to divide the subconscious and conscious mind in order to alleviate the psychic mind. The humanistic approach is to help develop, gain, and maintain a client's sense of self if it is weak. They use unconditional positive regard to gain a better sense of meaning and life in general. The cognitive approach to psychotherapy is to challenge negative thoughts about the sense and the world in order to diminish any unwanted behaviors. Cognitive therapy is usually paired up with behavioral therapy and it is used to treat mood disorders like depression and anxiety. The biological approach addresses the brain's abnormalities leading to certain behaviors. Hormones such as serotonin and dopamine control certain moods such as happiness and sadness and through the biological approach, we can see that certain moods can be affected. The biological approach usually paired with the medical model in order to prescribe certain drugs in order to enhance or depress certain moods. Sociocultural focuses on the social and cultural aspects of a psychological abnormality in order to regulate abnormal behaviors. This approach stresses that the human learning is largely a social and cultural learning process.

Psychodynamic Therapy

Therapy derving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight.

Behavior Therapy

Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of wanted behaviors.

Family Therapy

Therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individuals's unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient. Application: ECT can be used to treat major depression that hasn't responded to standard treatments.

Therapeutic Alliance

a bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client's problem.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

a disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions). Application: excessive double-checking of things, such as locks, appliances, and switches. Repeatedly checking in on loved ones to make sure they're safe. Counting, tapping, repeating certain words, or doing other senseless things to reduce anxiety.

Conversion Disorder

a disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found. (Also called functional neurological symptom disorder.) Application: Amy can not hear in her left ear and her doctors can not find a reason why.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

a personality disorder in which a person (usually a man) exhibits lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even towards friends and family members. May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist

Schizophrenia

a psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished or inappropriate emotion expression. Application: A blank, vacant facial expression. An inability to smile or express emotion through the face is so characteristic of the disease that it was given the name of affective flattening or a blunt affect.

Somatic Symptom Disorder

a psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause. (conversion disorder and illness anxiety disorder.) Application: constant anxiety towards pain, nausea, dizziness, and fainting without actually having it.

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

a psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one of more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity Application: the child skips, runs, jumps, walks, bends, and climbs when others are standing still

Lobotomy

a psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotional-controlling centers of the inner brain.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

an anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal Application: What if I'm caught in traffic and late for work? My boss might be angry with me and he might even fire me. What if I can't find another job and my friends and family think I'm a failure?

Phobia

an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation

Panic Disorder

an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations. Often followed by worry over a possible next attack. Application: a person suffering from panic disorder might stop leaving home in order to prevent having an attack or losing control in public

Eclectic Approach

an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy

Token Economy

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.

Counterconditioning

behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning. Application: will give your dog something he loves! (hot dog pieces, cheese, whatever he goes nuts about) every time the scary object appears in sight.

Exposure Therapies

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treats anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid Application: while working with someone who has a fear of spiders—arachnophobia—an exposure therapist might first ask the person to picture a spider in his or her mind. This might lead to several sessions in which the therapist asks the person to imagine more intense scenes with the spider, all while teaching coping skills and providing support. Once the anxiety response is reduced, the therapist may progress to real life exposure. In this type of exposure, the therapist might start by placing a contained spider at the far end of the room and lead up to placing the spider in the person's hand.

Evidence-Based Practice

clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences.

Rumination

compulsive fretting; over thinking about our problems and their causes.

Antianxiety Drugs

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

drugs used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. (Several widely used antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.-SSRIs.)

Antipsychotic Drugs

drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder.

Delusions

false beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders. Application: Belief that others — often a vague "they" — are out to get him or her. These persecutory delusions often involve bizarre ideas and plots

Agoraphobia

fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic.

Social Anxiety Disorder

intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such.

Posttraumatic Growth

positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises

Biomedical Therapy

prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person's physiology.

Anxiety Disorders

psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety. Application: Panic Disorders, Social Anxiety Disorders, Specific Phobias, Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Mood Disorders

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes. Application: Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Cyclothymic Disorder, etc.

Personality Disorder

psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning. Application: Antisocial Personality Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder, Schizoid Personality Disorder.

Binge-Eating Disorder

significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging or fasting that marks bulimia nervosa.

Psychosurgery

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior Application: amygdalotomy, limbic leucotomy, and anterior capsulotomy.

DSM-5

the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)

the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity. Application: rTMS works by creating magnetic pulses in the loops of the coil. These magnetic field pulses produce small electric currents that stimulate nerve cells in the brain. These magnetic pulses also stimulate muscles and skin in the scalp and cause a moderate tapping sensation to be felt in the scalp under the coil.

Medical Model

the concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital

Resilience

the personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma

Psychopharmacology

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

Regression toward the mean

the tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average. Application: The Sports Illustrated jinx is an excellent example of regression to the mean. The jinx states that whoever appears on the cover of SI is going to have a poor following year (or years). But the "jinx" is actually regression towards the mean. Most players have good games, and they have bad games. A winning streak is usually just that: a lucky streak. And it leads to being on the cover of SI. But it's statistically likely to be followed by a fall back to average performance.

Group Therapy

therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction.

Cognitive Therapy

therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions. Application: Robert is a college student who wants to go to medical school. He knows that his college grade point average will be used by schools during the admission process. He receives a D in a class on American History. He becomes demoralized thinking now that his lifelong dream to be a physician is no longer possible.

Psychotherapy

treatment involving psychological techniques, consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.