Disorders

Psychological disorder

  • A mental condition that changes the way that you think, act and interpret everyday life. Different neuron connections. A harmful dysfunction in which thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are maladaptive, unjustifiable, disturbing and atypical

MUDA acronym

In order for a condition to be considered a disorder, they have to follow all of the four criterium

Maladaptive

  • Destructive to oneself or others
  • Maladaptive behaviors are sometimes - not always - an exaggeration of normal acceptable behavior

Unjustifiable

  • Without a rational basis
  • Sometimes these practices are accepted in certain contexts, times, traumatic experiences, personal backgrounds, and cultural expectations
  • Cell phones today are weird and seem without reason to older generations, but are completely normal for all newer generations.

Disturbing

  • Troublesome to other people
  • Bringing people around to things that you enjoy but they would rather not do kinda counts

Atypical

  • So different that it violates a norm
  • Different (not like other people’s behaviors)
  • Violates a norm - an unofficial rule for accepted and expected behavior in a particular culture

Disorder Assignment: Conversion Disorder

Symptoms: source

  • Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES). Seizures typically happen because of conditions or issues with your brain’s structure or how it’s working. Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures happen because of mental health conditions (the word “psychogenic” means “of mental health origin”).

  • Sense-related disruptions. Trouble with senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch are all possible with conversion disorder. Some examples include double or tunnel vision, hearing loss or numbness, and the inability to feel something touching your skin.

  • Pain. People with conversion disorder often feel pain, sometimes with other symptoms and sometimes on its own.

  • Unusual muscle tension, spasms, twitches and tremors. These all happen because of a disruption in how your brain controls your muscles.

  • Muscle weakness or paralysis.

  • Trouble swallowing (dysphagia).

  • Dizziness.

  • Fainting or passing out (syncope).

  • Chronic fatigue or lack of energy.

MUDA of Conversion Disorder:

Maladaptive:

  • Causes the person to have seizures, dysphagia, and chronic fatigue

    Unjustified

  • Gets dizzy, has lack of energy, and pain

    Disturbing

  • Passing out likely makes the person rely on others to protect their unconscious body

    Atypical

  • Has unusual spasms

Understanding Disorders

Perspectives of psychological disorders have changes through the centuries.\

Written records of attempts to understand abnormal behavior go back at least 4000 years.

Babylon:

Ancient Babylonians viewed disorders as the result of a demonic possession and treated them with prayer and magic.

Hebrews:

Ancient Hebrews saw psychological disorders as punishment for sin, and they too, looked to religion for a cure.

Ancient Greek:

Socrates and other ancient Greek Philosophers blamed faulty thought processes for psychological disorders and believed in healing in the power of words.

Early Attempts:

Early brain surgeries would cut part of the skull and remove parts that seemed to be infected, this did not work as the brain is necessary

Unfortunately, not all approaches to treatment have been humane

Fifteenth-century Europeans suspected that people showing symptoms of psychological disorders were possessed by demons, and they often tortured or executed the sufferers to oust these bad spirits

Salem Witch Trials:

People with disorders in this town would be killed rather than considered for treatment, sparking the idea to find new ways to “fix” disordered people

Philippe Pinel:

Late 1700s - early 1800s, these many wars caused that around 60% of the french population had mental disorders, so he created the medical model:

The medical model of mental illness is a concept that mental diseases have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and in most cases cured

This model replaces the ugliness of asylums and torture with the humanness of hospitals and therapy

This medical model is still alive today, and focuses almost exclusively on nature and almost never on nuture, but it fails to be able to be used for disorders that cannot be physically detected

Bio-Psycho-Social model

Bio

  • Caused by genes, brain structure, and chemistry

Psycho

  • Stress, trauma, helplessness, mood-related perceptions and memories

Social

  • Roles, expectations, definitions of normality and disorder

Anxiety Disorder

A vague feeling of apprehension and nervousness

  • Long term worry

  • Feeling that something bad is going to happen

  • Nervous or scared

  • Flight or fight

  • Types:
    1. Social
    2. OCD
    3. Attachment
    4. Performance
    5. Phobias
    6. Body Dysmorphia
    7. PTSD

Can be found genetically (passed down from parents), and in animals other than humans

Mood Disorders

Disturbances of out emotions, magnifications of out normal reactions

Types:

1. Bipolar Disorder
2. Depression
3. Mania

Dissociative Disorder: When one’s sense of self has become separated (dissociated from their memories, thought, or feelings

  • Amnesia:
    1. When one looses memories due to a traumatic experience
  • Dissociative Fugue:
    1. The loss of ones identity and travel to a new location
  • Dissociative Identity Disorder:
    1. A disorder in which in individual exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities (trauma based)

Schizophrenic:

It is not one disorder. It is a family of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and behavior

TYPES OF THERAPY

Humanistic Therapy:

  • Involves another human
  • Humanistic therapies aims to promote self-fulfillment by increasing self-acceptance and self-awareness
  • Fostering growth instead of relieving illness: thus, these therapists refer to people in therapy as clients instead of patients
  • Focusing on the present and future instead of past

Behavioral Therapy:

  • Behavior therapy applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors
  • Systematic Desensitization:
    1. A type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli
    2. Some allergies are able to become neutral to the recipient from gradual increments in the dosage of the allergen

Family and Group Therapies:

  • Treat the family as a system
  • Interventions or group texts

Drug therapies:

  • Medicinal drugs
  • Electroconvulsive Therapy:
    • Hooking someone to a machine to cause a seizure, hopefully restarting the brain
    • Does not cause major life changing defects
  • Psychosurgery:
    • Lobotomy - A neurosurgical treatment of a mental disorder that involves severing connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex
    • Parts of the the frontal lobe would be hammered/removed, makes someone have a pure flat affect