Anxiety Disorders

In my post about panic disorder, I described fear as an emotion that elicits the "fight-or-flight" response of the autonomic nervous system. In anxiety, unlike fear, there is no activation of the fight-or-flight response. Anxiety is a long-term response oriented towards future events rather than imminent danger. Short-lived, low levels of anxiety can be good because they help prepare a person for upcoming activities such as an exam or sports event. However, long-term high-intensity anxiety creates a state of chronic over-arousal that can lead to physical troubles such as reduced immune response (i.e. susceptibility to disease) and increased blood pressure, as described in my post about the biological effects of stress.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Most people are familiar with obsessive compulsive disorder as is popularized in many TV shows and movies. My favorite is Monk, a TV show about Adrian Monk, an investigator who works with the San Francisco police department. Due to Monk's severe OCD (along with other disorders), he was forced into retirement as a detective with the San Francisco PD. The show is unflinching about the negative effects of Monk's disorder, but of course it introduces humor into his predicament. 

According to the DSM-5, obsessions are "recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images" that are intrusive and cause distress. The individual attempts to ignore the obsessions, but is generally unable to. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors - such as hand washing, checking, praying, counting, or word repetition - that the individual feels compelled to perform in order to reduce anxiety and distress.

Panic Disorder

Fear is an emotion that elicits the "fight-or-flight" response of the autonomic nervous system. It is an immediate (uncontrollable) response to a direct danger - such as a rattlesnake, a gun pointed at your head, or a fast car driving right at you. Fear is generally a helpful response that allows you to protect or remove yourself from the imminent peril. 

Sometimes the fear response can occur in the absence of any obvious stimulus - this can lead to a panic attack. Panic attacks are terrifying physiological and psychological events in which your autonomic nervous system ramps you up for fight-or-flight. Often, the person becomes terrified that they are dying - usually of a heart attack. Like intense fear, the heart starts pounding, adrenaline flows, breathing races. Sometimes the victim will run from the room - perhaps to a hospital or perhaps with no direction at all - to escape the unseen threat. 

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - the Basics

I think we all have some idea of what we think PTSD is, but it turns out PTSD isn't as clear-cut as I thought.

Apparently, when PTSD was first introduced into the DSM, the diagnostic criteria required a traumatic event "outside the range of usual human experience" that would cause "significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone." That fits pretty well with my own perception of PTSD. Rape, war, torture, violent experiences...these all fit into that description. PTSD is a normal response to an abnormal stressor. 

Clinical Mental Health Diagnosis - Psychological Assessment

In my post about the biological assessment of mental health diagnosis, I mentioned that there are three ways a clinician can focus a mental health assessment: biological, psychodynamic, and behavioral. In this post I will discuss the psychodynamic and behavioral assessments of patients. 

I'm not sure what a psychological assessment feels like to the clinician, but I have been through several assessments as a patient. Some of them have been very grueling and embarrassing - my 2 hour long assessment for dialectical behavioral therapy comes to mind. Generally, the mental health worker will ask a series of questions to determine personality (am I maladaptive?), social context (am I from an abusive family? caring for an sick family member? a bullied teen?), and culture (I'm a WASC) .

Clinical Mental Health Diagnosis - Biological Assessment

One of the most difficult tasks for mental health workers is to clinically assess and diagnose mental illnesses - especially when comorbidity (having more than one mental illness) is so common. It usually begins with a psychological assessment through tests, observation, and interviews so the clinician can catalog the symptoms. Then the DSM-5 is consulted to give the diagnosis. 

A clinician may focus the assessment in three ways - biological, psychodynamic, and behaviorally. 

Contemporary viewpoints on treating mental illness - psychology

This post will discuss the psychological causes and treatments of mental illness, as described in Butcher's Abnormal Psychology.

Psychological viewpoints consider humans not only as biological entities but as products of our personalities and experiences. There are three major psychosocial views on behavior: psychodaynamic, behavioral, and cognitive-behavioral. 

Contemporary viewpoints on treating mental illness - biology

Chapter 3 of Butcher's Abnormal Psychology has too much information for me to adequately summarize in one post. Therefore, I will break it into a few posts. So please bear with me. Of the chapters so far, this chapter was the longest and the least interesting to me. Which is unfortunate, because it's also the chapter that has the highest distribution of points in the upcoming exam. 

The main purpose of this chapter is to review the three contemporary viewpoints on treating mental illness - biological, psychological, and social. This post will review the biological causes of mental illness.

A History of Abnormal Psychology

Chapter 2 of Butcher's Abnormal Psychology is a bit harder to summarize than Chapter 1. It covered the reactions of people towards  the mentally ill throughout history. There were lots of names mentioned, and trends galore. But I will try to focus on the ones that I found most interesting. 

The Definition of Abnormal

Well, my first week of Abnormal Psychology is through. We've read chapters 1-2 of our textbook, Abnormal Psychology by James N Butcher.

Chapter 1 was mainly about defining "abnormal" in the sense of "abnormal psychology." This is a lot more difficult than you might imagine.