Mental Disorders

Chapter 16

Problems in Identifying Mental Disorders

MENTAL DISORDER: a disturbance in a person’s emotions, thought processes, or behavior that results in: serious and relatively prolonged

distress and/or impairment in the ability to function

Not simply a normal response to some event in the person’s environment

Not explainable as an effect of poverty, prejudice or other social force that prevents the person from behaving adaptively

Categorizing and Diagnosing Mental Disorders

VALIDITY: the degree to which the disorders identified are clinically meaningful; that is, the degree to which the diagnostic labels predict real-world behaviors and treatment outcomes

Labeling an individual can be harmful Blinds you to other qualities

the person may have Can reduce their self-esteem Can interfere with the

individual’s ability to cope with their environment

RELIABILITY: the degree to which different diagnosticians, all trained in the use of the diagnostic system, reach the same conclusions when they independently diagnose the same individuals

The Brain Is Involved in All Mental Disorders

All thoughts, emotions and behaviors are products of the brain.

The role of the brain is most obvious in chronic mental disorders—that is, they stay with you for life once they appear Autism Down Syndrome Alzheimer’s Disease

Amyloid plaques

A Framework for Thinking About Multiple Causes of Mental Disorders

• Those conditions that are in place well before the onset of a mental disorder and that make the person susceptible to the disorder

Predisposing Causes

• The events that most immediately bring on a mental disorder in a person who is sufficiently predisposed for the disorder

Precipitating Causes

• Those consequences of a mental disorder—such as the way other people treat the person who has it—that help keep the disorder going once it begins

Perpetuating Causes

Anxiety Disorders Class of disorders in which fear or anxiety is the prominent system.

Generalized anxiety disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder - anxiety disorder characterized by two phenomena:

- Obsessions: disturbing thoughts that intrude repeatedly on a person’s consciousness

- Compulsions: a repetitive action that helps to alleviate the obsession

Panic disorder - Mental disorder characterized by the repeated occurrence of panic attacks at unpredictable times and with no clear relationship to environmental events.

- Panic attack: intense feeling of terror, which usually lasts several minutes, and is accompanied by signs of high physiological arousal

Phobias - mental disorder characterized by a strong, irrational fear of some particular category of object or event

Post-traumatic stress disorders - a mental disorder that is directly and explicitly tied to a particular traumatic incident or set of incidents that the affected person has experienced

Depressive Disorders

Mood• Prolonged emotional state that influences a person’s

thoughts and behavior

Depression• Prolonged sadness, self-blame, loss of hope, a sense of

worthlessness, and absence of pleasure

Major Depression• Mental disorder characterized by severe depression that

lasts essentially without remission for at least two weeks

Dysthymia• Mental disorder characterized by feelings of depression that

are less severe than those in major depression but which last for at least a two-year period

Cognitive & Biological Factors

Hopelessness theory:

1. The person assumes that the negative event will have catastrophic consequences

2. The person assumes that the negative event reflects something negative about himself or herself

3. The person attributes the cause of the negative event to something that is stable and global

Suffering stressful experiences predispose one to develop a depressive episode

Genes partly predisposes one to develop depression

Depression may be partly due to dysregulation of serotonin or norepinephrine in the brain, and increased release of cortisol

Bipolar Disorders

• Mood disorders that are characterized by episodes of abnormally high mood (mania) and abnormally low mood (depression)

Bipolar Disorders

• The most severe type of bipolar disorder, characterized by at least one episode of mania and one episode of major depression

Bipolar I Disorder

• The type of bipolar disorder in which the manic phase is less extreme than it is in Bipolar I Disorder and is referred to as hypomania

Bipolar II Disorder

The Manic Condition

Mania is characterized by euphoria, elevated self-esteem, increased talkativeness, decreased need for sleep and increased energy

Bipolar disorders have been linked with creativity

Schizophrenia

NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS: a lack of or reduction in expected behaviors, thoughts, feelings and drives Lack of speech Flattened affect Loss of basic drives such as

hunger Anhedonia

DELUSIONS: a false belief held in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary Persecution Being controlled Grandeur HALLUCINATIONS: false sensory perceptions Auditory: hearing voices

POSITIVE SYMPTOMS:

SCHIZOPHRENIA: a serious class of mental disorder that is characterized by disrupted perceptual and other thought processes, often including hallucinations and delusions• Disorganized thought and

speech, Echolalia, Neologisms

Genes & Environmental Contributions to Schizophrenia

Increased genetic relatedness increases probability of presenting the disorder (1.1% population rate)

• Identical twin : 48%

• Fraternal twin: 17%

• Non-twin sibling: 9%

• Both parents: 46%

• One parent: 13%

• Grandparent: 5%

The prenatal environment (malnutrition, birth problems, head injury)

Stressful life events can precipitate schizophrenia and exacerbate its symptoms

Children of parents who communicate in a disorganized, disjointed or highly emotional manner were more likely to develop schizophrenia