ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

Beware of the “medical student’s disease”.

I. Introduction to the abnormal

A. What’s in a name?
1. What does it mean to be abnormal?
2. How do we define mental illness, behavior disorder and mental disorder?
3. What does it mean to be crazy, a lunatic, insane, neurotic, psychotic?
4. Historical perspectives on the causes of abnormal behavior: Prehistoric,
Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern
B. How are psychological disorders classified?
1. The most commonly used system of classifications is the DSM IV – TR.
2. Some problems with classification: DSM-IV has a medical orientation, naming is
not explaining, and labels are attached to the person
C. Major Types of Psychological Disorder
1. Anxiety Disorders
a. Anxiety is a useful warning signal, but generalized anxiety disorder is
persistent, unrealistic anxiety, tension, and worry. In panic disorder, the
person suddenly has attacks of terror for no reason, with a feeling of
doom and physical signs of anxiety.
b. There may be a genetic link in panic attacks, and the person’s thoughts
may interact with physical signs of anxiety to make things worse.
c. A phobia is an exaggerated fear and avoidance of a situation that is not
actually threatening. Humans may be biologically prepared to learn that
phobias for dangerous things. We extinguish learned fears more slowly
than we acquire them.
d. Obsessions are repeated, intrusive, uncontrollable thoughts, while
compulsions are the need to perform certain acts over and over.
Inherited malfunctions in the brain or neurotransmitters are one
possible cause of obsessions and compulsions. Another is a learning
pattern in which anxiety is reduced through the obsessive or compulsive
behavior.
e. The best strategy for eliminating minor intrusive thoughts is not to try to
force the thought out of your mind, but to substitute another thought.
2. Somatoform (Bodily) Disorders
a. Psychosomatic disorders are physical ailments with a real physical basis
that are caused in part by psychological factors.
b. Somatoform disorders are physical ailments without physical basis.
c. Somatization disorder is characterized by a history of diverse symptoms
with no physical basis.
d. Hypochondriasis is the interpretation of stress-caused physical
symptoms as signs of a major physical problem.
e. Conversion disorder is the loss of function of some part of the body with
no physical basis.
f. People with somatoform disorders typically are rewarded for their
disorder in some way --- that is, they gain something from it.
3. Dissociative Disorders
a. Psychogenic amnesia is a loss of memory produced by psychological
factors. The shock of some terrible event leads to memory loss, which
fits Freud’s theory of repression.
 b. Multiple personality is a disorder in which two or more personalities
exist in the same person. It may be caused by suggestions from an
overattentive doctor, but the general causes are not known. The pattern
seems to begin in childhood as a reaction to stress.
4. Mood Disorders
a. Depression is characterized by sadness, despair, loss of interest in
pleasurable activities, low self-esteem, and physical symptoms such as
insomnia, fatigue, and loss of appetite. Major depression is different
from normal depression: it goes on longer and the symptoms are more
severe.
b. Women are more inclined to experience depression than do men.
c. The causes of depression are probably an interaction of psychological
and biological factors. People may also inherit a predisposition to
become depressed, deficits in neurotransmitters, may be one cause.
d. Factors related to reinforcement and punishments (too much or too
little) are possible causes of depression.
e. Learned helplessness, a negative explanatory style and hopelessness
may also account for depression.
f. Bipolar disorder is a condition characterized by abnormally elevated or
irritable moods, with inflated self-esteem, a less-than-usual need for
sleep, rapid talk, racing thoughts, grandiose plans, and reckless behavior.
There is a genetic basis for bipolar disorder.
5. Schizophrenic Disorders
a. Schizophrenia is a group of disorders showing severe disturbances in
thinking, perception, emotion, and behavior.
b. People labeled as mentally ill are often socially stigmatized, but many
with schizophrenia recover fully, and many others recover enough to
lead productive lives.
c. Symptoms include: loosening associations, delusions or false beliefs,
hallucinations or false sensory perceptions, catatonia which is either
immobility or agitated behavior, social withdrawal, and emotional ability
d. There is a genetic element in the causation of schizophrenia. Both brain
abnormalities and an excess of dopamine have been suggested as the
mechanism.
e. Developing schizophrenic symptoms may require an interaction of
biological vulnerability with stress.
6. Personality Disorders
a. Personality disorders are habitual ways of behaving that create problems
for the person even though he or she may not see a problem.
b. The reliability of classifying the different types of personality disorder is
low.
c. The antisocial personality does not conform to commonly accepted
norms of morality and behavior.
d. It’s been suggested that such people have an inherited predisposition to
be less-than-usually fearful, or have sluggish nervous systems, so that
they do not learn from punishment.