Mood Disorders and Schizophrenia

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes

Two principle forms:

1. major depressive disorder

• 2. bipolar disorder
• manic-depressive disorder

3/5 signs of depression:

1. lethargy (lack of energy or enthusiasm)

2. feelings of worthlessness

3. loss of interest in family, friends, activities

lasting two or more weeks

anguish of grief +sluggishness of jet lag

alternating between depression and mania

• manic characteristics:
• overtalkative, overactive, elated, fewer inhibitions->poor judgement and reckless behavior

• People w/bipolar disorder:
• Walt Whitman
• Mark Twain
• Ernest Hemingway
• George Handel
• Robert Schumann

Many behavioral and cognitive changes accompany depression.

Depression is widespread

Compared with men, women are nearly twie as vulnerable to major depression.

Most major depressive episodes self-terminate

Stressful events related to work, marriage, and close relationship often precede depression

With each new generation, depression is striking earlier(now often in teens) and affecting more people

Areas of funded interest: genetic predispositions, brain activity, and biochemical imbalance

• Genetic Influences
• Mood disorders increase if a parent or sibling has a disorder
• linkage analysis-examined DNA from effected and uneffected family memers; points to chromosome area

• The Depressed Brain
• Left frontal lobe likely to be inactive during depressed state

Norepinephrine(increases arousal, boosts mood) scarce during depression, overabundant during mania

Seratonin scarce during depression; protein controlling seratonin activity

Self-defeating beliefs and negative explanatory style

• Negative Thoughts and Negative Mood Interact:
• self-defeating beliefs->learned helplessness

• Depression's Vicious Cycle
• Negative, stressful event ->negative explanatory style->
• depressed mood->cognitive and behavioral changes->(fuels negative experience again)

group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions

1 out of 100 will develop schizophrenia

literally meaning "split mind"

• Disorganized Thinking
• disorganized thoughts--breakdown of selective attention
• delusions
• paranoid tendencies
• Disturbed Perceptions
• hallucinations(sensory experiences without sensory stimuation)

• Inappropriate Emotions and Actions
• inappropriate actions
• --laughing after talking about death
• or
• lapse into emotionless state of flat affect

can strike as early as young people going into maturation to adulthood

• positive symptoms: halluncinations, disoriented talk, inappropriate emotions
• negative symptoms: toneless voice, expressionless face, mute and rigid bodies
• --postive symptoms presence of inappropriate behavior
• --negative symptoms absence absence of appropriate behavior