| Term | Definition |
|---|
| medical model | The conceptualization of psychological abnormalities as diseases that, like biological diseases, have symptoms and causes and possible cures |
| DSM-IV-TR | A classification system that describes the features used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from other, similar problems |
| comorbidity | The co-occurrence of two or more disorders in a single individual |
| diathesis-stress model | Suggests that a person may be predisposed for a mental disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress |
| anxiety disorder | The class of mental disorder in which anxiety is the prominent feature |
| generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) | A disorder characterized by chronic excessive worry accompanied by three or more of the following symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, concentration problems, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbance |
| phobic disorders | Disorders characterized by marked, persistent, and excessive fear and avoidance of specific objects, activities, or situations |
| specific phobia | A disorder that involves an irrational fear of a particular object or situation that markedly interferes with an individual's ability to function |
| social phobia | A disorder that involves an irrational fear of being publicly humiliated or embarrassed |
| preparedness theory | The idea that people are instinctively predisposed toward certain fears |
| panic disorder | A disorder characterized by the sudden occurrence of multiple psychological and physiological symptoms that contribute to a feeling of stark terror |
| agoraphobia | An extreme fear of venturing into public places |
| obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) | A disorder in which repetitive, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and ritualistic behaviors (compulsions) designed to fend off those thoughts interfere significantly with an individual's functioning |
| dissociative disorder | A condition in which normal cognitive processes are severely disjointed and fragmented, creating significant disruptions in memory, awareness, or personality that can vary in length from a matter of minutes to many years |
| dissociative identity disorder (DID) | The presence within an individual of two or more distinct identities that at different times take control of the individual's behavior |
| dissociative amnesia | The sudden loss of memory for significant personal information |
| dissociative fugue | The sudden loss of memory for one's personal history, accompanied by an abrupt departure from home and the assumption of a new identity |
| mood disorders | Mental disorders that have mood disturbance as their predominant feature |
| major depressive disorder | A disorder characterized by a severely depressed mood that lasts 2 weeks or more and is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness and lack of pleasure, lethargy, and sleep and appetite disturbances |
| dysthymia | A disorder that involves the same symptoms as in depression only less severe, but the symptoms last longer, persisting for at least 2 years |
| double depression | A moderately depressed mood that persists for at least 2 years and is punctuated by periods of major depression |
| seasonal affective disorder (SAD) | Depression that involves recurrent depressive episodes in a seasonal pattern |
| helplessness theory | The idea that individuals who are prone to depression automatically attribute negative experiences to causes that are internal (i.e., their own fault), stable (i.e., unlikely to change), and global (i.e., widespread) |
| bipolar disorder | An unstable emotional condition characterized by cycles of abnormal persistent high mood (mania) and low mood (depression) |
| schizophrenia | A disorder characterized by the profound disruption of basic psychological processes; a distorted perception of reality; altered or blunted emotion; and disturbances in thought, motivation, and behavior |
| delusion | A patently false belief system, often bizarre and grandiose, that is maintained in spite of its irrationality |
| hallucination | A false perceptual experience that has a compelling sense of being real despite the absence of external stimulation |
| disorganized speech | A severe disruption of verbal communication in which ideas shift rapidly and incoherently from one to another unrelated topic |
| grossly disorganized behavior | Behavior that is inappropriate for the situation or ineffective in attaining goals, often with specific motor disturbances |
| catatonic behavior | A marked decrease in all movement or an increase in muscular rigidity and overactivity |
| negative symptoms | Emotional and social withdrawal; apathy; poverty of speech; and other indications of the absence or insufficiency of normal behavior, motivation, and emotion |
| dopamine hypothesis | The idea that schizophrenia involves an excess of dopamine activity |
| expressed emotion | Emotional overinvolvement (intrusiveness) and excessive criticism directed toward the former patient by his or her family |
| personality disorder | Disorder characterized by deeply ingrained, inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, or relating to others or controlling impulses that cause distress or impaired functioning |
| antisocial personality disorder (APD) | A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood |
| 40 | Approximately ___% of all people will develop some type of mental disorder during the course of their lives. |
| symptoms | Behaviors, thoughts, and emotions suggestive of an underlying abnormal syndrome |
| syndrome | A coherent cluster of symptoms usually due to a single cause |
| disturbances in behavior/thoughts/emotions, personal distress or impairment, internal dysfunction | Three criteria for determining whether a cluster of symptoms qualifies as a mental disorder according to the DSM-IV-TR |
| global assessment of functioning | A 0 to 100 rating of a person, with more severe disorders indicated by lower numbers and more effective functioning by higher numbers |
| general paresis | Dullness of mind and partial/progressive paralysis associated with syphilis that generated interest in finding organic bases for mental disorders, though it was an isolated case |
| Charcot | French psychiatrist who performed hypnosis on conversion symptom patients and found that he could remove or create these symptoms, indicating that these were not physical disorders but were somehow mediated psychologically. |
| psychological model | A model for treating mental disorders that emphasizes the role of learning |
| Szasz | Psychologist who criticized the medical model, claiming that "mental illness" was less appropriate a term than "problems in living" |
| neurosis and psychosis | Two divisions of mental disorders according to early psychologists |
| neurosis | A condition that involves anxiety but in which the person is still in touch with reality |
| psychosis | A condition in which the person experiences serious distortions of perception and thought that weaken his or her grasp on reality |
| insanity | A legal term referring to the state of mind of the defendant at the time of the crime |
| competence | A legal term referring to the defendant's state of mind at the time of a judicial hearing or trial |
| GBMI | Guilty but mentally ill |
| NGRI | Not guilty by reason of insanity |
| depression | People with ______________ often have secondary diagnoses of anxiety disorders |
| fundamental attribution error | Blindness to external causes when trying to understand the behavior of others |
| intervention-causation fallacy | The assumption that if a treatment is effective, it must address the cause of the problem |
| 70 | Nearly ___% of all people with diagnosable mental disorders do not seek treatment (possibly due to the stigma associated with mental disorders) |
| Rosenhan | Psychologist who, with a group of other psychologists, went to a mental hospital claiming to hear voices; they were incorrectly diagnosed with schizophrenia and were only dismissed as having schizophrenia in remission |
| generalized anxiety disorder | Drugs that stimulate the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) seem to be effective in reducing the symptoms of _____________. |
| clinical syndromes | Axis One of DSM-IV-TR |
| personality disorders or mental retardation | Axis Two of DSM-IV-TR |
| general medical conditions | Axis Three of DSM-IV-TR |
| psychosocial and environmental problems | Axis Four of DSM-IV-TR |
| global assessment of functioning scale | Axis Five of DSM-IV-TR |
| animals, natural environments, situations, blood/injections/injury, other phobias | Five categories of specific phobias |
| biological preparedness | A term used by Seligman to describe the fact that some stimuli produce phobias far more easily than others |
| two process theory | Accounts for the persistence of phobias as classical conditioning causes someone to become fearful of something they did not previously fear, and operant conditioning causes them to maintain this phobic fear, as their fear is reduced when they avoid the aversive stimulus |
| sodium lactate | A chemical that produces rapid, shallow breathing and heart palpitations; those with panic disorder are acutely sensitive to the drug |
| basic information, somatic control exercises, interoceptive exposure, in-vivo exposure | Four components of panic disorder treatment |
| washers, checkers | Two most common types of compulsions |
| flooding and response prevention | Behavioral treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder |
| childhood abuse, high susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion | Two common characteristics of people suffering from DID |
| somatoform | Physical ailments not fully explained by organic conditions and largely due to psychological factors |
| psychosomatic | Genuine physical ailments, caused in part by psychological factors (primarily, stress) |
| malingering | Deliberately faking illness |
| somatization | History of diverse medical complaints |
| hypochondriasis | Fear of the idea that one has a serious disease based on the misinterpretation of symptoms |
| conversion disorder | Significant loss of physical function with no apparent organic basis |
| 6, 80 | On average, major depression lasts about ___ months; however, about ___% of individuals will experience at least one recurrence of the disorder. |
| 33, 45 | Heritability estimates for major depression range from ___% to ___%. |
| left | Depression may involve diminished activity in the ____ prefrontal cortex. |
| Beck | One of the first theorists to emphasize the role of thought in depression; noticed that patients distorted perceptions of their experiences and turned to dysfunctional attitudes that promoted negative moods |
| cyclothymic disorder | chronic but milder bipolar symptoms |
| Seligman | Psychologist who conducted aversive treatment with shock for dogs that had been paralyzed and discovered the phenomenon of learned helplessness |
| one week | The length of time a manic phase must last to meet DSM requirements for bipolar disorder |
| rapid cycling bipolar disorder | A disorder characterized by at least four mood episodes (either manic or depressive) every year |
| bipolar disorder | The mental disorder with the highest rate of heritability (80% for identical twins and 16% for fraternal twins) |
| polygenic | Arising from the action of many genes in an additive or interactive fashion |
| lithium | A chemical that often helps stabilize both the depressive and manic symptoms associated with bipolar disorder |
| tricyclic antidepressant | Increases amount of norepinephrine in synaptic cleft by preventing reuptake; benefits depression |
| MAO inhibitor | Raises the level of norepinephrine by inhibiting its metabolism by MAO; benefits depression |
| ECT | Increases norepinephrine synthesis; benfits depression |
| reserpine | Lowers amount of norepinephrine in the brain by preventing storage; causes depression |
| grandeur, reference, persecution | Three most common types of delusions in schizophrenia |
| auditory | Most common type of hallucination in schizophrenia |
| mescaline | Structural similarities between norepinephrine and ___________ suggest that an error in the metabolism of norepinephrine could create a substance that causes schizophrenic symptoms |
| amphetamines | Drugs that facilitate the release of dopamine and slow their reuptake, causing schizophrenia-like symptoms |
| paranoid | Type of schizophrenia that involves delusions of persecution and grandeur |
| catatonic | Type of schizophrenia that involves motor disturbance from "waxy flexibility" or rigidity to random motor movements |
| disorganized | Type of schizophrenia that involves severe deterioration of behavior (florid symptoms, incoherence, babbling) |
| undifferentiated | Type of schizophrenia that is not assignable to a specific diagnosis |
| residual | Type of schizophrenia used for those who have substantially recovered from at least one schizophrenic episode but still have lingering symptoms |
| viral exposure, toxins | Two components of the prenatal environment that seem to be correlated with higher probability of schizophrenia |
| ventricles | Hollow areas of the brain filled wit cerebrospinal fluid; abnormally enlarged in many schizophrenic patients |
| Vaughn | Psychologist who find that high expressed emotion in the family led to greater probability of relapse in schizophrenic patients, and increased with more face-to-face contact |
| odd/eccentric, dramatic/erratic, anxious/inhibited | Three clusters of personality disorders |
| avoidant | Sensitive to potential rejection, humiliation, or shame; socially withdrawn despite desire for acceptance from others (anxious/fearful) |
| dependent | Lacking in self-reliance and self-esteem; passively allow others to make decisions (anxious/fearful) |
| obsessive-compulsive | Preoccupied with organization, extremely conventional, serious, formal, unable to express warm emotions (anxious/fearful) |
| schizoid | Defective in forming social relationships and don't care; absence of warm, tender feelings for others (odd/eccentric) |
| schizotypal | Social deficits; oddities of thinking, perception and communication that resemble schizophrenia (odd/eccentric) |
| paranoid | Pervasive and unwarranted suspiciousness/mistrust of other people; overly sensitive; prone to jealousy (odd/eccentric) |
| histrionic | Overly dramatic, exaggerated expressions of emotion; egocentric; seeking attention (dramatic/impulsive) |
| narcissistic | Grandiosely self-important; preoccupied with success fantasies; expect special treatment; lacking interpersonal empathy (dramatic/impulsive) |
| borderline | Unstable in self-image, mood, and interpersonal relationships; impulsive and unpredictable (dramatic/impulsive) |
| Lykken | Psychologist who concluded that people with antisocial personality disorder have a deficit in avoidance conditioning |
| Blair | Psychologist who found that psychopaths show less responsiveness to distress stimuli |
| gelotophobia | Fear of laughter found to be related to childhood teasing |
| Titze | Psychologist who studied gelotophobia |
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