Psychological Disorders Chapter 18

What are they? Psychological disorders are behavior patterns or mental processes that cause serious personal suffering or interfere with a person's ability to cope with everyday life. Deciding whether particular behaviors, thoughts, or feelings are "normal" or "abnormal" can be difficult.  What is normal is often equated with what is average for the majority of people.

Identifying psychological disorders Typicality- the normality of a behavior or mental process is often determined by the degree to which it is average, or typical, of the behavior or mental processes of the majority of people. Maladaptivity- this is what makes a behavior abnormal.  In other words, the behavior impairs an individual's ability to function adequately in everyday life. EX. Behavior that causes misery and distress, hazardous to oneself, threatening or attacking others or threatening or attempting suicide Emotional Discomfort- anxiety and depression cause most people serious emotional discomfort. EX. People who are depressed often suffer feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt, and extreme sadness; severe emotional discomfort may be a sign of a psychological disorder. Socially Unacceptable Behavior- behavior that violates a society's accepted norms may also be an indication of a psychological disorder. The importance of culture is demonstrated by culture-bound syndromes, which are clusters of symptoms that are considered recognizable diseases only within specific cultures or societies.  

Perspectives on anxiety disorders Psychoanalytic View: Anxiety represents the "leakage" of forbidden aggressive or sexual ideas or urges that were repressed during childhood. Learning View: Phobias are conditioned, or learned in childhood, either through direct experience or observation.  People avoid threatening situations to reduce anxiety. Biological View:  Anxiety disorders tend to run in families, suggesting a role for genetic factors.  Anxiety disorders may be the exaggerated remains of adaptive fears. Cognitive View:  People exaggerate threats and believe they are helpless to deal with them.

Perspectives on schizophrenia Psychoanalytic View: The ego is overwhelmingly threatened by the id. The individual regresses to an early phase of the oral stage of development, and fantasies become confused with reality. Other Psychological Views: A family environment in which a parent frequently expresses intense emotions and has a pushy, critical attitude puts children at risk for schizophrenia. Biological View: Loss of synapses in the brain have been linked to schizophrenia.  Other factors include heredity, complications during pregnancy and birth, birth during winter, and the brain's overuse of dopamine. Multifactorial View:  Biological psychological factors combine to put people at risk for schizophrenia.

Perspectives on a personality disorder Psychoanalytic View:  Lack of guilt due to a problem in the development of the conscience causes the antisocial personality. Other Psychological View:  Childhood experiences teach children how to relate to other people.  If children get attention only when they behave badly or don't have appropriate role models, they may develop antisocial behaviors. Biological View:  Heredity plays a role in antisocial disorders, as does having fewer neurons in the frontal part of the brain.