Test 1 Study Guide - Summary Abnormal Psychology PDF

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PSYC 3560 TEST 1 STUDY GUIDE

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50 questions, all multiple choice Know all the definitions from each chapter Go through the summaries at the end of each chapter Test is on chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and up to slide 30 for 5 Understand assessment; why we have assessment, different types of assessments Look through Discussion 2 posts to know the changes to the DSM o Things that have been added, removed Distress: negative stress our response when something negative happens What do we do to get out of stress? o Coping skills – extremely important when we talk about treatment for disorders, they are unique to each individual (know examples of coping)  Examples:  Social support/support system  Physical care  Mental stimulation, spiritual involvement (not necessarily religious) Crisis: more urgent; something is considered a crisis when you are unable to use coping skills to help you through it Cortisol: stress

Chapter 1 and 2 Abnormality -

Abnormal psychology deals with the nature, causes and treatment of mental disorders We see mental illness in our daily lives “Disorder” and “abnormal” still don’t really have universal agreements or definitions o This is why psychology is considered a ‘soft science’ Some indicators of abnormalities o Subjective distress, maladaptiveness, statistical deviancy, violation of the standards of society, social discomfort, irrationality and unpredictability, and dangerousness o Decisions about abnormal behavior involve social judgements

DSM-5 -

Diagnostic Statistical Manual – 5th edition Contains diagnoses and the criteria for each disorder o Each criteria has to be met before a diagnosis is given

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Advantages of classification o Treatment, identity, etc. Disadvantages of classification o Stigma, prejudice

Some Important Definitions -

Epidemiology: the study of the distribution of diseases, disorders, or health related behaviors Prevalence: the number of active cases in a population during any given period of time Point Prevalence: the estimated proportion of actual, active cases of a disorder in a given population in a given point in time 1-Year Prevalence: the number of active cases in a population during a single year Lifetime Prevalence: the number of cases in a population during a lifetime Incidence: the number of new cases that occur in a given period of time Etiology: the study of the causes of diseases, disorders, or health related behaviors Comorbidity: multiple disorders at once (ex: substance abuse) Acute: disorders that are short term Chronic: disorders that are long term Generalizability:

Historical Perspective Examples -

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Trephining: earliest attempts at treating mental disorders Idea of possession dominated thinking about abnormal behavior throughout much of history Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.E.) – Father of early medicine o Emergence of more scientific viewpoint o Clinical observation o Early attempts at classification with biological explanations  Four Humors Theory (Hippocrates and Galen) More scientific advances o Galen (C.E. 130-200) – Early mapping of nervous system and how it’s related to disorders  Scientific approach  Causes of psychological disorders  Physical and mental categories o Middle Ages in Europe (C.E. 500-1500) – Very unscientific  Supernatural explanations  Management of mental illness left to clergy  Mass madness  Witchcraft th 16 century – resurgence of scientific questioning o Paracelsus, Weyer

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o But, also establishment of asylums, which were primarily storage places for the mentally ill with deplorable conditions o Mental institutions grew rapidly in number around the world o Began to emerge in the United States in the mid-18th century Humanitarian reform – Late 18th to early 19th century, Europe began to take notice of the terrible conditions of mental health institutions o Pinel, Tuke Two important movements in America in the 19th century o Moral management: focused on social, individual, and occupational needs of patient o Mental hygiene movement: focused almost exclusively on physical wellbeing of patients Dorthea Dix (1802-1887): extremely influential in reforming mental institutions Lobotomies (~1935) Deinstitutionalization in the 20th century National Institute on Health (NIH) established in 1946 Community Health Services Act, 1963 More contemporary approaches o Four Major Developments: Biological Discoveries, Development of a Classification System, Development of the Psychological Basis of Mental Disorders, Experiment Psychology

Chapter 3 Necessary, Sufficient, and Contributory Causes -

Etiology: causal pattern of abnormal behavior Necessary Cause: must exist for disorder to occur Sufficient Cause: guarantees occurrence of disorder Contributory Cause: increases probability of developing disorder; reinforcing contributory cause maintains maladaptive behavior that is already occurring It is important to distinguish between: o Distal Causal Factors: occur early in life or don’t show effects for many years o Proximal (Immediate) Risk Factors o Reinforcing Contributory Cause: a condition that tends to maintain maladaptive behavior that is already occurring

Feedback and Bidirectionality in Abnormal Behavior -

In the study of abnormal psychology, why can it be difficult to specify which conditions are causes and which are effects? o Effects can serve as feedback that in turn influence the causes o Influences can be two-way, i.e. bidirectional

Diathesis-Stress Models -

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Diathesis: relatively distal necessary or contributory cause that is not sufficient to cause disorder Stress: response of individual to taxing demands Diathesis-Stress Models: combination of diathesis and stress to cause disorder, predisposition toward developing a disorder Many mental disorders are believed to develop when someone who has a preexisting vulnerability for that disorder experiences a major stressor Need a more proximal undesirable event to occur in combination with diathesis for disorder to occur Interactive Model: some amount of diathesis must be present before stress will have any effect Protective Factors: influences that modify person’s response to environmental stressors, making adverse consequences less likely o Can be positive (ex: good attachment to one parent), negative (response to medium amount of stress), or inherent trait in individual Diathesis-stress models need to be considered in a broad framework of multicausal developmental models To understand what is abnormal, one must always have a good understanding of normal human development at biological, psychological, and sociocultural levels of analysis (developmental psychopathology)

Perspectives for Understanding the Causes of Abnormal Behavior -

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Viewpoints: o Help professionals organize observations o Provide systems of thought o Suggest areas of focus Biological Perspective o Four categories of biological factors relevant to maladaptive behavior  Genetic vulnerabilities  Brain dysfunction and neural plasticity  Neuro-transmitter & hormonal abnormalities in brain and CNS  Temperament o A normal human male has 23 pairs of chromosomes  Vulnerability to mental disorder almost always polygenic – not coded for by one gene. Genes affect behavior indirectly  Personality traits and mental disorders are not affected by chromosomal abnormalities per se, but more often influence either by abnormalities in some of the genes on the chromosomes or by naturally occurring variations of genes known as polymorphisms

The Relationship of Genotypes to Phenotypes -

Genotype: total genetic endowment, what you inherit Phenotype: observed structural and functional characteristics, what is expressed (interaction between genes and environment)

Genotype-Environment Interactions -

Genetic factors can contribute to a vulnerability or diathesis to develop psychopathology o PKU-induced intellectual disability o Genetic risk for depression

Genotype-Environment Correlations -

Individual’s genotype may shape environment in the following ways: o Passive Effect: resulting from the genetic similarity of parents and children o Evocative Effect: child’s phenotype may evoke particular kinds of reactions from social and physical environment o Active Effect: child seeks out or builds environment that congenial; “niche building”

Methods for Studying Genetic Influences -

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Traditional Methods o Family history method: observe samples of relatives of each proband or index case and compare incidence rate in family to rate in population o Twin method: compare rates of disorders in identical twins to rates in nonidentical twins, expecting higher concordance rate for identical twins o Adoption method: compare adopted offspring with normal biological parents to offspring with biological parents with disorder More recent methods: o Linkage analysis: see if family members with disorder share commonality of a trait with known genetic marker. Infer gene location for disorder. Best for locating single-gene disorders such as Huntington’s o Association studies: compare frequencies in population with and without disorder and compare frequencies of traits with known genetic markers

Imbalances of Neurotransmitter Systems -

Neurotransmitter Imbalances o Can result in abnormal behavior o Created in various ways: overproduction, deactivation, abnormally sensitive or insensitive o Hormones: chemical messengers secreted by a set of endocrine glands in our bodies

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5 most studied neurotransmitters o Norepinephrine o Dopamine o Serotonin o Glutamate o Gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA)

Hormonal Imbalances -

Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis o Messages (CRH) travel from the hypothalamus to the pituitary o Pituitary releases ACTH, which stimulates cortical part of the adrenal gland, produces epinephrine (adrenaline) and cortisol o Cortisol provides negative feedback to hypothalamus and pituitary to decrease their release of CRH and ACTH, which in turn reduces the release of adrenaline and cortisol

Psychodynamic Perspective -

Freud theorized that a person’s behavior results from interaction of: o Id: source of instinctual drives; operates on pleasure principle o Ego: mediates between demands of id and realities of external world; operates on reality principle  Often deals with neurotic or moral anxiety by resorting to irrational protective measures referred to as ego-defense mechanisms, such as displacement, fixation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation o Superego: outgrowth of internalizing taboos and moral values of society; conscience o The concept of anxiety is prominent in the psychoanalytic viewpoint

Psychosexual Stages of Development -

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Freud conceptualized five psychosexual stages of development o Oral stage (ages 0 to 2) o Anal stage (ages 2 to 3) o Phallic stage (ages 3 to 5 or 6) o Latency period (ages 6 to 12) o Genital stage (after puberty) Each stage is characterized by a dominant mode of achieving libidinal (sexual) pleasure Appropriate gratification during each stage is important if a person is to avoid being stuck, or fixated Oedipus complex o Castration anxiety Electra complex

o Penis envy Newer Psychodynamic Perspectives -

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Ego psychology: psychopathology develops when the ego does not function adequately to control or delay impulse gratification or does not make adequate use of defense mechanisms when faced with internal conflicts Object-relations theory: focus on individuals’ interactions with real and imagined other people (external and internal objects) and on the relationships that people experience between their external and internal objects Intrapersonal perspective: emphasis on social and cultural determinants of behavior Attachment theory: emphasizes early experiences with attachment figures as determinant of behavior in adolescence and adulthood

What provides the central theme of the behavioral approach? o Learning – the modification of behavior as a consequence of experience

Classical Conditioning -

If conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without unconditioned stimulus, extinction will occur o Important for behavioral treatment o Not unlearning because the response may return at some future point (spontaneous recovery)

Operant Conditioning -

Operant (instrumental) conditioning: new responses are learned and tend to reoccur if they are reinforced o An individual learns how to achieve a desired goal; concept of reinforcement is essential to instrumental conditioning o New responses are learned and tend to reoccur if they are reinforced, called response-outcome expectancy (e.g., a child who gets candy when he whines may learn to whine) o Conditioned avoidance response may occur in situations in which a subject has been conditioned to anticipate an aversive event and so consistently avoids those situations

Observational Learning -

Observational learning: learning through observation alone without directly experiencing an unconditioned stimulus

The Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective

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Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective: focuses on how thoughts and information processing become distorted o Has had a powerful impact on contemporary clinical psychology Schema: underlying representation of knowledge that guides current processing of information Attributions: process of assigning causes to things that happen Attributional style: characteristic way in which individual may tend to assign causes to good or bad events

The Cultural Perspective -

The cultural perspective is concerned with the impact of culture on the definition and manifestation of mental disorders

Chapter 4 Basic Elements in Assessment -

Situational or pervasive? Duration? Prior attempts to help or treat? Self-defeating or resourceful? How does problem impact social roles? Does problem match any DSM-5 disorder criteria?

Reliability, Validity, and Standardization -

Reliability: assessment measure produces same result every time it is used Validity: assessment measures what it aims to measure Standardized: assessment is consistent and fair for all persons taking assessment; allows for comparison to normative sample

Assessment of Physical Organism -

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General physical examination o Many psychological problems have physical components either as:  Causal factors  Symptom patterns Neurological examination o EEG: graphical record of brain’s electrical activity (tumor, lesion, electrical dysrhythmia) o CAT scan: uses x-ray technology to provide images of brain structures that may be damaged or diseased o MRI: uses magnetic imaging to measure oxygen flow (using water content) in brain; produces sharper images than CAT scan

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o PET scan: tracks metabolic activity of specific compounds, such as glucose; can reveal problems that are not necessarily anatomical by nature o fMRI: measures changes in oxygen (blood flow) while patient undergoes a task; can map psychological activity to specific regions in the brain Neuropsychological examination o Involves use of expanding array of testing devices o Measures cognitive, perceptual, and motor performance o Provides clues to extent and location of brain damage o Neuropsychological testing provides a clinician with important behavioral information on how organic brain damage is affecting a person’s present functioning Psychosocial Assessment o Three procedures commonly used in psychosocial assessments include:  Assessment interviews  Clinical observation of behavior  Psychological tests  Intelligence tests  Personality tests

Classifying Abnormal Behavior -

Benefits of classification include: o Introduction of order o Communication establishment o Statistical research data use o Clarification of insurance issues

Differing Models of Classification -

Categorical approach: a patient is healthy or disordered, but there is no overlap Dimensional approach: the patient may fall along a range from superior functioning to absolutely impaired functioning Prototypal approach: a conceptual entity depicts an idealized combination of characteristics, some of which the patient may not have

Formal Diagnostic Classification of Mental Disorders -

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Definition criteria based on: o Symptoms (subjective) o Signs (objective) DSM-5 o More comprehensive and more subtypes of disorders o Allows for gender related differences in diagnosis o Provides structured interview regarding cultural influences Problem of diagnostic labeling:

o Label only captures a behavioral pattern o Creates assumptions among clinicians o Creates social identity (stigma)

Chapter 5 -

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Stress: external demands placed on an organism; organism’s internal biological responses to such demands o Significant component of multiple DSM diagnostic categories  Trauma and stressor-related disorders o Predisposing factors of stress  Nature of stressor, experience of crisis, life changes, individual perception of stressor, and individual stress tolerance Characteristics of Stressors o Key factors:  Severity  Chronicity  Timing  Degree of impact  Level of expectation  Controllability Social Readjustment Rating Scale: self-report checklist to measure life stress Life Events and Difficulties Schedule: interview-based life stress measurement that rates chronic and acute stress Factors linked to resilience to stress o Male gender, older age, higher education, economic resources, positive life outlook, and self confidence Allostatic load: biological cost of adapting to stress o High load = more stress Sympathetic-adrenomedullary (SAM) system and Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system both respond when stressor is perceived

Stress and Immune System Functioning -

Stress is linked to immune system suppression o Short-term stress compromises immune system o Long-term stress associated with global immunosuppression

Chronic Stress and Inflammation -

Long-term stress -> body cannot turn off cytokine production -> chronic inflammation

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Telomeres: the protective end parts of chromosomes, shorten with age, increasing the risk of disease; shortened by stress

Emotions and Health -

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Depression o Associated with disrupted immune function beyond stressors that precipitated depression Anxiety o Phobic anxiety is linked to increased risk for sudden cardiac death Social isolation and lack of social support o Lonely people at increased risk of developing heart disease Positive emotions o Forgiveness may lower stress levels Emotional regulation o Psychological well-being o Physical health

Treatment of Stress-Related Physical Disorders -

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Biological interventions o Surgical procedures, lipid-lowering medications, aspirin or other anticoagulants, and antidepressant medications Psychological interventions o Emotional disclosure, biofeedback, relaxation and meditation, and cognitivebehavior therapy

Adjustment disorder: reaction to a common stressor Posttraumatic stress disorder: reaction to a traumatic stressor...