1. Unit 12 and 13 Abnormal Psychology and Treatment of Abnormal Behavior

2. Topics to Explore Defining & Classifying Disorders
Three Categories of Disorders
Treatment of Mental Disorders

3. Part 1 Defining & Classifying Mental Disorders

4. What is Abnormal Psychology?
Abnormal Psychology: the scientific study of mental disorders and their treatment
Subjective Discomfort: anxiety, depression, or emotional distress
Social Nonconformity: Disobeying societal standards for normal conduct; usually leads to destructive or self-destructive behavior.
Statistical Abnormality: Having extreme scores on some dimension, such as intelligence, anxiety, or depression.

5. Two Considerations
Situational Context: Social situation, behavioral setting, or general circumstances in which an action takes place
Is it normal to walk around strangers naked? If you are in a locker room and in the shower area, yes!
Cultural Relativity: Judgments are made relative to the values of one’s culture

6. Three Criteria for Abnormality
Maladaptive Behavior: Behavior that makes it difficult to meet everyday demands
Significant impairment in psychological functioning: lose the ability to control thoughts, behaviors, or feelings
Atypical behavior: not typical of the majority of the population
Classification  DSM-V published by APA

7. Some DSM-V Categories Mood Disorders Anxiety Disorders
Somatoform Disorders
Factitious Disorders
Dissociative Disorders
Sexual & Gender Identity Disorders
Eating Disorders
Sleep Disorders
Adjustment Disorders
Personality Disorders
Disorders First Diagnosed in Childhood
Organic Mental Disorders
Substance Related Disorders
Schizoprenia Disorders
Paranoid Disorders
Impulse Control Disorders

8. General Risk Factors for Mental Illness
Social Conditions: Poverty, homelessness, overcrowding, stressful living conditions
Family Factors: Parents who are immature, mentally ill, abusive, or criminal; poor child discipline; severe marital or relationship problems
Psychological Factors: Low intelligence, stress, learning disorders
Biological Factors: Genetic defects or inherited vulnerabilities;

9. Incidence of Mental Disorders

10. Clarifying Some Terms
Insanity: A legal term; refers to an inability to manage one’s affairs or to be aware of the consequences of one’s actions
Neurosis: Archaic; once used to refer to excessive anxiety, somatoform, dissociative disorders, and some kinds of depression

11. Part 2 Three Major Categories of Mental Disorders

12. Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety: Feelings of apprehension, dread, or uneasiness
Anxiety Disorder: a disorder in which excessive anxiety leads to personal distress and atypical, maladaptive, and irrational behavior

13. Specific Phobias
Specific Phobias: Irrational, persistent fears, anxiety, and avoidance that focus on specific objects, activities, or situations
Agoraphobia: Intense, irrational fear that a panic attack will occur in a public place or in an unfamiliar situation
Social Phobia: Intense, irrational fear of being observed, evaluated, humiliated, or embarrassed by others

14. Panic Disorder
Panic Disorder: A chronic state of anxiety with brief moments of sudden, intense, unexpected panic (panic attack)
Panic Attack: Feels like one is having a heart attack, going to die, or is going insane. Symptoms include vertigo, chest pain, choking, fear of losing control

15. Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Duration of at least six months of chronic, unrealistic, or excessive anxiety
Symptoms: sweating, racing heart, clammy hands, dizziness, upset stomach, rapid breathing, irritability, poor concentration.

16. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Extreme preoccupation with certain thoughts and compulsive performance of certain behaviors
Obsession: Recurring images or thoughts that a person cannot prevent.
Compulsion: Irrational acts that person feels compelled to repeat against his/her will

17. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
PTSD = characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal
More emotional distress leads to a greater chance of PTSD
Most common among women

18. Mood Disorders
Mood Disorders: Major disturbances in emotion, such as depression or mania
Depressive Disorders: Sadness or despondency that are prolonged, exaggerated, or unreasonable
Bipolar Disorders: Involve both depression and mania or hypomania

19. Childbirth-related Mood Disorders
Maternity Blues: Mild depression that lasts for one to two days after childbirth
Marked by crying, fitful sleep, tension, anger, and irritability
Postpartum Depression: Moderately severe depression that begins within three months following childbirth
Marked by mood swings, despondency, feelings of inadequacy, and an inability to cope with the new baby

20. Psychotic Disorders
Psychosis: Loss of contact with shared views of reality
Delusions: False beliefs that psychotic individuals insist are true, regardless of overwhelming evidence against them
Hallucinations: Imaginary sensations, such as seeing, hearing, or smelling things that do not exist in the real world

21. Other Psychotic Symptoms
Flat Affect: Lack of emotional responsiveness; face is frozen in blank expression
Disturbed Verbal Communication: Garbled and chaotic speech; word salad
Personality Disintegration: Uncoordinated thoughts, actions, and emotions

22. Schizophrenia: The Most Severe Disorder
Schizophrenia: Psychotic disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, apathy, thinking abnormalities, and “split” between thoughts and emotions
Does NOT refer to having split or multiple personalities

23. Four Types of Schizophrenia
Disorganized Type: Incoherence, grossly disorganized behavior, bizarre thinking, and flat or inappropriate emotions
Catatonic Type: Marked by stupor, unresponsiveness, posturing, and mutism
Paranoid Type: Preoccupation with delusions; also involves hallucinations that are related to a single theme, especially grandeur or persecution
Undifferentiated Type: Any type of schizophrenia that does not have paranoid, catatonic, or disorganized features or symptoms

24. Causes of Schizophrenia
Psychological Trauma: Psychological injury or shock, often caused by violence, abuse, or neglect
Disturbed Family Environment: Stressful or unhealthy family relationships, communication patterns, and emotional atmosphere
Deviant Communication Patterns: Cause guilt, anxiety, anger, confusion, and turmoil
Stress-Vulnerability Hypothesis: Combination of environmental stress and inherited susceptibility cause schizophrenic disorders

25. Biochemical Causes
Biochemical Abnormality: Disturbance in brain’s chemical systems or in the brain’s neurotransmitters
Dopamine overactivity in brain may be related to schizophrenia, depression
Negative thoughts + negative mood = rumination

26. Genetic Predisposition

27. PET Scans of Normal & Schizophrenic Brains

28. Schizophrenic Patients 10 Years Later

29. Other Disorders Dissociative disorder = sudden loss of memory/identity
Personality disorder = disruptive patterns that impair social functioning

30. Part 3 Treatment of Mental Disorders

31. Types of Therapists
Clinical psychologist: has doctoral degree in clinical psychology; provides therapy for people with mental disorders
Counseling psychologist: has doctoral degree in psychological or educational counseling; counsels people with milder problems
Psychiatrist: has medical degree with residency in mental health, provides therapy for people with mental disorders and is only type of therapist who can prescribe drugs or other biomedical treatment
Psychoanalyst: Any of the above types of credential, but with training in psychoanalysis from a psychoanalytic institute
Clinical social worker: has master’s or doctoral degree in social work with specialized training in counseling; provides help with social problems, such as family problems.

32. Biomedical Therapies
Biomedical therapies: medical treatment for mental disorders; includes drug therapy and medical procedures treating the brain

33. Pharmacotherapy
Pharmacotherapy: Use of drugs to alleviate emotional disturbance; three classes:
Antianxiety (Minor Tranquilizers): Produce relaxation or reduce anxiety (Valium, Lithium, Zanax)
Antidepressants: Elevate mood and combat depression (Elavil, Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft)
Antipsychotics (Major Tranquilizers): Tranquilize and also reduce hallucinations and delusions in larger dosages (Thorazine, Clozaril)

34. Problems with Drug Therapy
There can be serious side-effects (tranquilizers can cause neurological disorders; Clozaril associated with a fatal blood disorder)
Drugs do not cure the disorder; they only ameliorate the symptoms.
Reliance on drugs increase belief in the “quick fix”; belief that any disorder can be cured with a pill.
Generally, psychotherapy is needed in addition to medication.

35. Shock Therapy
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): Electric shock is passed through the brain inducing a convulsion.
Based on belief that seizure alleviates depression by altering brain chemistry
Used in treatment of depression
Produces only temporary improvement
Causes permanent memory loss in many patients
Should only be used as a last resort

36. Psychosurgery Psychosurgery: Any surgical alteration of the brain
Prefrontal Lobotomy: Frontal lobes in brain are surgically cut from other brain areas
Supposed to calm people who did not respond to other forms of treatment
Was not very successful
Deep Lesioning: Small target areas in the brain are destroyed by using an electrode

37. What is Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy: Any psychological technique used to facilitate positive changes in personality, behavior, or adjustment;
Some types of psychotherapy:
Psychoanalysis: therapy based on Freud’s theory
Client-centered therapy: based on Humanism
Behavioral and Cognitive therapies

38. Psychoanalytic Techniques
Main Goal of Psychoanalysis: To resolve internal conflicts that lead to emotional suffering
Free Association: Saying whatever comes to mind, regardless of how embarrassing it is. By doing so without censorship and censure, unconscious material can emerge
Dream Analysis: Dreams express forbidden desires and unconscious feelings
Latent Content: Hidden, symbolic meaning of dreams
Manifest Content: Obvious, visible meaning of dreams
Dream Symbols: Images in dreams that have personal or emotional meanings

39. Psychoanalytic Techniques, continued
Analysis of Resistance: analysis of blockage in flow of ideas; topics the client resists thinking about or discussing. Resistances reveal particularly important unconscious conflicts
Analysis of Transference: analysis of tendency to transfer feelings to a therapist that match those the patient has for important people in his or her past. The patient might act like the therapist is a rejecting father, loving mother, etc.

40. Client-Centered (Humanistic) Therapies
Client-Centered Therapy (Rogers): Nondirective and based on insights from conscious thoughts and feelings
Effective therapist must have four basic conditions
Unconditional Positive Regard: Unshakable acceptance of another person, regardless of what they tell the therapist or how they feel
Empathy: Ability to feel what another person is feeling; capacity to take another person’s point of view
Authenticity: Ability of a therapist to be genuine and honest about his or her feelings
Reflection: Rephrasing or repeating thoughts and feelings of the clients; helps clients become aware of what they are saying

41. Humanistic Therapies
Existential Therapy: An insight therapy that focuses on problems of existence, such as meaning, choice, and responsibility; emphasizes making difficult choices in life
Therapy focuses on death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness
Free Will: Human ability to make choices. You can choose to be the person you want to be
Confrontation: Clients are challenged to examine their values and choices

42. Behavioral Therapies
Behavior Therapy: Use of learning principles to make constructive changes in behavior
Behavior Modification: Using any classical or operant conditioning principles to directly change human behavior
Deep insight is often not necessary
Focus on the present; cannot change the past, and no reason to alter that which has yet to occur
Can also use classical conditioning techniques

43. Behavioral Therapies
Aversion Therapy: Associate a strong aversion to an undesirable habit like smoking, overeating, drinking alcohol, or gambling
Flooding: client is exposed to feared object or situation.

44. Behavioral Therapies
Systematic Desensitization: Guided reduction in fear, anxiety, or aversion; attained by approaching a feared stimulus gradually while maintaining relaxation
Best used to treat phobias: intense, unrealistic fears
Hierarchy: Rank-ordered series of steps, amounts, or degrees
Reciprocal Inhibition: One emotional state is used to block another (e.g., impossible to be anxious and relaxed at the same time)

45. Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive Therapy: Therapy that helps clients change thinking patterns that lead to problematic behaviors or emotions
Selective Perception: Perceiving only certain stimuli in a larger group of possibilities
Overgeneralization: Allowing upsetting events to affect unrelated situations
All-or-Nothing Thinking: Seeing objects and events as absolutely right or wrong, good or bad, and so on
Cognitive therapy is VERY effective in treating depression, shyness, and stress

46. Rational Emotive Therapy
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (Albert Ellis): Attempts to change irrational beliefs that cause emotional problems
Common Sense:
Activating Event  Consequence (feelings, behavior)
Rational Emotive View:
Activating Event  Beliefs  Consequence (feelings, behavior)

47. Rational Emotive Therapy