ab psych handout

• Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry about everyday things.
• Normality is defined as average, meaning that what is accepted by the majority is considered normal.
• Abstract thinking is characterized by the ability to appreciate nuances of meaning, multidimensional thinking, and the ability to use metaphors and hypotheses appropriately.
• Concrete thinking is characterized by literal thinking, limited use of metaphor without understanding of nuances of meaning, and one-dimensional thought.
• Normality is also associated with social conformity, meaning that anyone who conforms to social norms is normal.
• Normality is also associated with social comfort, meaning that if a person feels comfort or pleasure, then it is normal.
• Normality is also a process, meaning that no one is instantly normal, we undergo certain processes and undergo adjustment.
• Cultural Relativism is the view that there are no universal standards or rules for labeling a behavior as abnormal, behaviors can only be abnormal relative to cultural norms.
• Culture and gender can affect ways how people express their symptoms.
• Culture and gender can influence people’s willingness to admit certain types of behavior.
• Culture and gender can influence the types of treatments deemed acceptable or helpful for maladaptive behaviors.
• Unusualness is defined as behaviors that are deviant, or unusual, are considered abnormal.
• Behaviors should be considered abnormal only if the individual suffers distress and wishes to be rid of the behaviors.
• Mental Illness is defined as behaviors are not abnormal unless a part of a mental illness.
• The Four D’s of Abnormality are Dysfunction, Distress, Deviance, and Dangerousness.
• Signs and symptoms of psychopathology are typically categorized as Signs (Objective), Symptoms (Subjective), and Syndromes (Constellation of signs and symptoms that make up a recognizable condition).
• Disturbances of consciousness include Consciousness (state of awareness), Apperception (perception modified by one’s own thoughts and emotions), and Sensorium (state of functioning of the special senses).
• Circumstantiality is a disturbance in the associative thought and speech processes in which a patient digresses into unnecessary details and inappropriate thoughts before communicating the central idea, observed in schizophrenia, obsessional disturbances, and certain cases of dementia.
• Verbigeration is meaningless and stereotyped repetition of words or phrases, as seen in schizophrenia, also called cataphasia.
• Perseveration is a pathological repetition of the same response to different stimuli, as in a repetition of the same verbal response to different questions.
• Seen in cognitive disorders, schizophrenia, and other mental illness.
• Poverty of content is thought that gives little information because of vagueness, empty repetitions, or obscure phrases.
• Tangentiality is an oblique, digressive, or even irrelevant manner of speech in which the central idea is not communicated.
• Flight of ideas is a rapid succession of fragmentary thoughts or speech in which content changes abruptly and speech may be incoherent.
• Loosening of associations is a characteristic schizophrenic thinking or speech disturbance involving a disorder in the logical progression of thoughts, manifested as a failure to communicate verbally adequately, unrelated and unconnected ideas shift from one subject to another.
• Condensation is a mental process in which one symbol stands for a number of components.
• Incoherence is thought that, generally, is not understandable, as a patient never gets from desired point to desired goal.
• Blocking is an abrupt interaction in train of thinking before a thought or idea is finished after a brief pause, person indicates no recall of what was being said or was going to be said.
• Mood-congruent delusion is a delusion with content that is mood appropriate, seen in depressed patients who believe that they are responsible for the destruction of the world.
• Clang association is an association or speech directed by the sound of a word rather than by its meaning, words have no logical connection, punning and rhyming may dominate the verbal behavior, seen most frequently in schizophrenia or mania.
• Irrelevant answer is an answer that is not in harmony with the question asked.
• Systematized delusion is a group of elaborate delusions related to a single event or theme.
• Bizarre delusion is a false belief that is patently absurd or fantastic, common in schizophrenia.
• Word Salad is an incoherent, essentially incomprehensible, mixture of words and phrases commonly seen in far-advanced cases of schizophrenia.
• Delusion is a false belief, based on incorrect inference about external reality, not consistent with patient’s intelligence and cultural background that cannot be corrected by reasoning.
• Glossolalia is unintelligible jargon that has meaning to the speaker but not to the listener, occurs in schizophrenia.
• Derailment is a gradual or sudden deviation in train of thought without blocking, sometimes used synonymously with loosening of association.
• Echolalia is a person’s psychopathological repeating of words or phrases of by another, tends to be repetitive and persistent, seen in certain kinds of schizophrenia, particularly the catatonic types.
• Overvalued idea is a false or unreasonable belief or idea that is sustained beyond the bounds of reason; it is held with less intensity or duration than a delusion, but is usually associated with mental illness.
• Neologism is a new word or phrase whose derivation cannot be understood, often seen in schizophrenia.