APT - Abnormal Psychology and Treatment Module Overview

 

Abnormal Psychology and Treatment

How do you define normalcy? What is normal in your household or culture could be considered very odd in another. Abnormal characteristics aren't the only criterion for diagnosing a mental disorder though. In this unit, you will learn about the categories of mental disorders, what criterion must be met to be diagnosed with each disorder, and appropriate treatment options for each disorder. Knowing about mental health disorders and the types of treatment available could help you or someone you care about get the help needed to deal with a potential struggle with mental health. A knowledge of mental health issues also helps most students have greater appreciation for mental health and a deeper understanding of and empathy for people who deal with mental health issues.

Essential Questions

• What criterions distinguish normal from disordered behavior?
• What are the effects of diagnosing and labeling disorders?
• What methods are used to diagnose and assess abnormal behavior?
• What are the major categories of psychological disorders?
• What are the treatment options for each disorder?
• How do psychologists determine the best treatment option for their patients?

Key Words

1. Psychological disorder - syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior; reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning
2. DSM-5 - the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition), a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders in the United States
3. MMPI - the most common test used by psychologists to determine if a person has a mental disorder; can also be used to determine if a person has characteristics necessary to do a certain job, like police work  
4. Anxiety disorders - psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety; including phobias and panic attacks
5. Generalized anxiety disorder - an anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal
6. Panic disorder - an anxiety disorder characterized by unpredictable minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations
7. Phobia - an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation
8. Obsessive compulsive disorder - a disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsession) and/or actions (compulsions); related disorders include body dysmorphic disorder, hoarding disorder, and others such as hair pulling disorder and skin picking disorder
9. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, anxiety, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience; may include irritable or aggressive behavior, self-destructive behavior, re ‐ experiencing, avoidance/numbing, and arousal
10. Mood disorders - psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes
11. Depressive Disorders ‐ characterized by deep and persistent feelings of sadness or despair, feelings of worthlessness, and/or a loss of interest in things that once were pleasurable
12. Major depressive disorder - severe symptoms that interfere with the ability to work, sleep, study, eat, experience pleasure, and lasts two or more weeks
13. Bipolar disorder - a disorder in which the person exhibits episodes of mania/hypomania and a major depressive disorder occur
14. Mania - a period of increased energy, activity, and optimistic mood
15. Personality disorders - psychological disorders characterized by disruptive, inflexible, and enduring behavior patterns of impaired psychosocial functioning
16. Antisocial personality disorder - a personality disorder in which the person (more typically a man) exhibits a lack of conscience and impulsive, uninhibited, aggressive, or ruthless behavior
17. Schizophrenia - group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and inappropriate emotions and actions
18. Delusion - a belief that is clearly false
19. Hallucinations - a sensory experience with no external sensory input
20. Psychodynamic therapy (aka psychoanalytic therapy) - Sigmund Freud's therapeutic techniques are used to release repressed memories and feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight
21. Eclectic approach - an approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy
22. Biomedical therapy - prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system
23. Psychosurgery - surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior
24. Lobotomy - a now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients; the procedure cut the nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain
25. Cognitive therapy - therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions
26. Behavioral therapy - therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors
27. Counterconditioning - a behavior therapy procedure that conditions new responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted behavior; includes exposure therapy and aversive therapy
28. Exposure therapy - behavioral techniques such as systematic desensitization that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear and avoid
29. Systematic desensitization - a type of counter conditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli; commonly used to treat phobias
30. Aversive conditioning - a type of counter conditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol)    
31. Cognitive-behavior Therapy - a popular integrated therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior)

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