Psychology - Stress, Phobias and Schizophrenia

Mental disorders that affect one or more function of the mind. A mental illness can interfere with thoughts, emotions, perceptions and behaviours. Serious departure from normal functioning

• Handbook that is used to identify and classify symptoms of mental disorders. Descriptive - it does not specify the causes of the mental disorder nor does it direct the
• treatment, though it also includes the onset, course and persistence of
• symptoms

Tool for diagnosing most health problems, including physical and mental. Covers a wider range of illnesses than the DSM

• Axis 1 - Clinical disorders, any major physical disorder
• Axis 2 - Mental retardation and personality disorders
• Axis 3 - General Medical Conditions
• Axis 4 - Psychosocial and environmental problems
• Axis 5 - Global assessment of functioning (GAF)

DSM and ICD are categorical approaches - is expected to move towards a dimensional approach

A person's symptoms are represented by numerical values on a scale/continuum rather than assigning them to a category

• Considers a wider range of symptoms and characteristics and analyses the severity.
• Can help reduce stigmas.
• Gives a more detailed profile of an individual's mental condition. 

There is no set questionnaire or inventory that uses a dimensional approach. So a psychologist needs to create questions and scales to rate a client on different dimensions – time consuming and difficult.

A psychological and physical response of the body that occurs whenever we must adapt to changing conditions, whether those conditions be real or percieved.

Physiological reactions caused by a perception of a threatening situation, causes the person to either stay and fight or run away

• Eustress - Stress that is positive in nature
• e.g. winning a trip overseas

• Distress - Stress that is negative in nature
• e.g. failing an important exam

• Stages of G.A.S.:
• Stage 1:
•  - Alarm
•  - Shock
•  - Countershock
• Stage 2:
•  - Resistance
• Stage 3 :
•  - Exhaustion

• Strengths:
•  - Found that the greater the intensity of the stressor, the greater the physiological response
•  - Provided a rich, empirically based information about the physiological processes involved in an animals response to a range of stressors

• Limitations:
•  - Predominantly based on research on laboratory rats
•  - Failed to recognise the role of emotion and cognition in how a person perceives and evaluates the stressor

• Strengths:
•  - Used human subjects in developing the model
•  - Takes both mental and emotional processes into account
• Limitations:
•  - Greater focus on psychological factors meant that less emphasis was placed on the physiological elements of the stress response
•  - Did not include cultural, social or environmental factors 

• Primary Appraisal:
•  - The recognition of a potentially stressful situation. 
•  - The person assesses the situation as stressful, neutral or irrelevant and if stressful, they determine what should be done about it

• Secondary Appraisal:
•  - The stage where the person considers what options are available to them and how they will respond

• Emotional Forecasting:
•  - Involved in both stages, in primary appraisal the person predicts what feelings the given situation will produce

• Positive Emotions:
•  - Happinness, pride, relief

• Negative Emotions:
•  - Anger, disgust, guilt, envy

• Problem focused:
•  - Addresses the practical effects of the stressor and tries to manage or reduce the effect of the stressor or adapt to it’s impact.

• Emotion Focused Copying:
•  - Seeks to address the emotions caused by the stressor

Used to describe not just the idea of homeostasis, but that of achieving biological and psychological stability with a ‘variable’ response to stressors or challenges.

Term used to describe the number of stressors that a person may experience, leading to repeated arousal - the body can deal with many stressors at one time

• A scientifically based treatment that uses sensitive instruments to monitor and provide feedback/information about a person’s heart rate, respiration rate, brainwaves, skin temperature, moisture on the skin and muscle tone in ‘real-time’ 
•    
• Through operant conditioning, the person is taught to change the levels of these processes by altering their thoughts, emotions and behaviour. This method is used to feed back physiological information about the autonomic processes that usually occur without conscious awareness.

Meditation redirects a person’s usual flow of conscious thoughts to a more focused pathway that leads to a deep state of calmness and relaxation

Can be described as a process of one’s muscles and thoughts. This is usually done using methods such as visualisation, breathing techniques and graduated muscle tensing and relaxing sequences where each part of the body is systematically tensed and relaxed until the person experiences a release of physical and psychological tension.

The fear of a single specific object or event that triggers a panic response.

E.g. spiders, snakes, heights, blood

• Simple Phobia
• Agoraphobia
• Social Phobia

CBT uses a combination of verbal and behavioural modification techniques to help people change irrational patterns of thinking that create a phobia. CBT focuses on helping the person change negative thoughts and replaces them with most positive, realistic ones.

Hallucinations - experience or perceptions, such as sight or sound, which are not present in reality.

Anhedonia - occurs when a person does not gain any pleasure from normally enjoyable activities

Disorganised behaviours - occurs when patients are unable to organise their behaviour or are unable to perform everyday routine tasks

Catatonia - refers to impaired or abnormal motor movements, such as repeated gestures, unusual hand or arm actions or waving of arms and legs

Inappropriate affect - symptoms refer to showing inappropriate emotional response, for instance laughing at a funeral

A category of mental disorders where people lose contact with reality

• Disorganised Schizophrenia:
•  - Disorganised thoughts and speech
•  - Delusions and hallucinations
•  - Inappropriate emotions and behaviours

• Paranoid Schizophrenia:
•  - Organised and complicated delusions
•  - Auditory hallucinations

• Catatonic Schizophrenia:
•  - Behaviour switches between catatonic trance and negativity to excitement or violent and hysterical behaviour

• Residual Schizophrenia:
•  - Minor symptoms develop such as unsual behaviour

• Undifferentiated Schizophrenia:
•  - For those people who experience symptoms that do not fit into other subtypes