Chapter 14

Agoraphobia

Fear or avoidance of embarrassing or inescapable situations, especially large, open, or public spaces.

Psychosis

A serious mental disorder characterized by extreme mental disruption and defective or lost contact with reality.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-V)

A classification system developed by the American Psychiatric Association that is used to describe abnormal behaviors.

Delusions

A false or irrational belief maintained despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Hallucinations

A false, imaginary sensory perception that occurs without an external, objective source.

Anxiety Disorder

A group of disorders characterized by fear or anxiety, accompanied by physiological arousal, and related behavioral disturbances.

Depressive Disorders

A group of mental disorders, including major depressive disorder, characterized by sad, empty, or irritable moods that interfere with the ability to function.

Schizophrenia

A group of severe disorders involving major disturbances in perception, language, thought, emotion, and behavior.

Diathesis-stress model

A hypothesis about the cause of certain disorders, such as schizophrenia, which suggests that people inherit a predisposition (or "diathesis") that increases their risk for mental disorders if they are exposed to certain extremely stressful life experiences.

Personality Disorder

A mental disorder characterized by chronic, inflexible, maladaptive personality traits,which cause significant impairment of social and occupational functioning.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

A mental disorder characterized by persistent, unwanted, fearful thoughts (obsessions), and/or irresistible urges to perform repetitive or ritualized behaviors (compulsions).

Bipolar Disorder

A mental disorder characterized by repeated episodes of mania (unreasonable elation, often with hyperactivity) alternating with depression.

Borderline Personality Disorder

A mental disorder characterized by severe instability in emotion and self-concept, along with impulsive and self-destructive behaviors.

Dissociative Identity Disorder

A mental disorder characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality systems in the same individual at different times; previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD).

Phobia

A persistent and intense, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation.

Dissociative Disorders

A psychological disorder marked by a disturbance in the integration of consciousness, identity, memory and other features.

Asylums

As the Middle Ages ended, special mental hospitals called asylums began to appear in Europe. Initially designed to provide quiet retreats from the world and to protect society, the asylums unfortunately became overcrowded, inhumane prisons.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

An anxiety disorder characterized by persistent, uncontrollable, and freefloating, nonspecified anxiety.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder in which sufferers experience sudden and inexplicable panic attacks; symptoms include difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, dizziness, trembling, terror, and feelings of impending doom.

Neurosis

An outmoded term and category dropped from the DSM, in which a person does not have signs of brain abnormalities and does not display grossly irrational thinking or violate basic norms, but does experience subjective distress.

Deviance

Behaviors, thoughts, or emotions may be considered abnormal when they deviate from a society or culture 's norms or values. For example, it 's normal to be a bit concerned if friends are whispering, but abnormal if you 're equally concerned when total strangers are whispering.

Abnormal Behavior

Patterns of behaviors, thoughts, or emotions considered pathological (diseased or disordered) for one or more of these four reasons: deviance, dysfunction, distress, or danger.

Mania

People with bipolar disorders, however, rebound to the opposite state, known as mania (Figure 14.5). During a manic episode, the bipolar person is overly excited, and easily distracted. In addition, he or she exhibits unrealistically high self-esteem, an inflated sense of importance, and poor judgment—giving away valuable possessions or going on wild spending sprees. The person also is often hyperactive and may not sleep for days at a time, yet does not become fatigued. Thinking is faster than normal and can change abruptly to new topics, showing "rapid flight of ideas." Speech is also rapid ("pressured speech"), making it difficult for others to get a word in edgewise. A manic episode may last a few days or a few months, and it generally ends abruptly. The ensuing depressive episode generally lasts three times as long. The lifetime risk for bipolar disorder is low—between 0.5 and 1.6%—but it can be one of the most debilitating and lethal disorders, with a suicide rate between 10 and 20% among sufferers

Dopamine Hypothesis

Precisely how genetic inheritance produces schizophrenia is unclear. According to the dopamine hypothesis, overactivity of certain dopamine neurons in the brain causes some forms of schizophrenia. This hypothesis is based on two observations. First, administering amphetamines increases the amount of dopamine and can produce (or worsen) some symptoms of schizophrenia, especially in people with a genetic predisposition to the disorder. Second, drugs that reduce dopamine activity in the brain reduce or eliminate some symptoms of schizophrenia.

Substance-Related and addictive Disorders

Problems associated with the use of alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, and gambling

Culture-bound Disorders

SEE PAGE 468

Learned Helplessness

Seligman 's term for a state of helplessness or resignation, in which human or nonhuman animals learn that escape from something painful is impossible; the organism stops responding and may become depressed.

Gender Dysphoria

Significant distress associated with a perceived mismatch between gender identity and biological sex

Psychiatry

The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders.

Comorbidity

The co-occurrence of two or more disorders in the same person at the same time, as when a person suffers from both depression and alcoholism.

Medical Model

The diagnostic perspective which assumes that diseases (including mental illness) have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and possibly cured.

Insanity

The legal (not clinical) designation for the state of an individual judged to be legally irresponsible or incompetent to manage his or her own affairs because of mental illness.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

The pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others, beginning in childhood or early adolescence and continuing into adulthood; includes traits like unlawful behaviors, deceitful and manipulative behaviors, impulsivity, irritability and aggressiveness, consistent irresponsibility, reckless disregard for self and others, and lack of remorse.

Trephining

What causes abnormal behavior? Historically, evil spirits and witchcraft have been blamed. Stone Age people, for example, believed that abnormal behavior stemmed from demonic possession; the "therapy" was to bore a hole in the skull so the evil spirit could escape, a process we call trephining.