ABPSYCH

• Abnormal psychology


  The branch of psychology that studies abnormal behavior and ways of helping people who are affected by psychological disorders
• Psychological disorder


  • A pattern of abnormal behavior that is associated with states of significant emotional distress, such as anxiety or depression, or with impaired behavior or ability to function, such as difficulty holding a job or even distinguishing reality from fantasy
• Psychopathology


  The field of study concerned with the nature, development, and treatment of mental disorders. Synonymous to Abnormal Psychology.
• Clinical description


  Details of the combination of behaviors, thoughts and feelings of an individual that make up a particular disorder
• Epidemiology


  Deals with the incidence, distribution or possible control of diseases and other factors related to health
• Prevalence


  How many people in the population as a whole have the disorder
• Incidence


  Statistics on how many new cases occur during a given period
• Course


  Pattern or period of the disorder (chronic, episodic...)
• Onset


  Start or beginning of the disorder
• Prognosis


  Anticipated course of a disorder
• Etiology


  Study of origins, has to do with why a disorder begins and includes biological, psychological and social dimensions
• Demonology


  The doctrine that an evil being or spirit can dwell within a person and control his or her mind and body
• Demonological thinking


  • Found in the records of the early Chinese, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks
• Demonological thinking among Hebrews


  • Odd behavior attributed to possession of the person by bad spirits, after God in his wrath had withdrawn protection
• Exorcism

  Ritualistic casting out of evil spirits
• Hippocrates

  • Separated medicine from religion, magic, and superstition
  • Regarded the brain as the organ of consciousness, intellectual life, and emotion
  • Thought that disordered thinking and behavior were indications of some kind of brain pathology
• Mental disorders classified by Hippocrates

  • Mania
  • Melancholia
  • Phrenitis, or brain fever
• Galen


  Greek physician who followed Hippocrates' ideas and is regarded as the last great physician of the classical era
• During the Dark Ages, the Church gained in influence, and the papacy was declared independent of the state
• Christian monasteries replaced physicians as healers and as authorities on mental disorder
• Monks cared for people with mental disorders by praying over them and touching them with relics; they also concocted fantastic potions for them to drink in the waning phase of the moon
• Many people with mental illness roamed the countryside, destitute and progressively becoming worse
• In response to widespread social unrest and recurrent famines and plagues, people in Europe turned to demonology to explain these disasters
• Witchcraft, now viewed as instigated by Satan, was seen as a heresy and a denial of God
• In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII exhorted the clergy of Europe to leave no stone unturned in the search for witches
• The Malleus Maleficarum ("the witches' hammer") was issued to guide the witch hunts
• From the thirteenth century on, as the cities of Europe grew larger, hospitals began to come under secular jurisdiction
• The term lunacy comes from a theory espoused by the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493–1541), who attributed odd behavior to a misalignment of the moon and stars
• Until the fifteenth century, there were very few hospitals for people with mental illness in Europe
• Leprosy hospitals were converted to asylums, refuges for the confinement and care of people with mental illness
• Bethlehem


  The Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem, founded in 1243, became a hospital devoted solely to the confinement of people with mental illness
• The conditions in Bethlehem were deplorable, and the word "bedlam" came to mean a place or scene of wild uproar and confusion
• Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) believed that mental disorder was caused by an excess of blood in the brain, for which his favored treatment was to draw great quantities of blood from disordered individuals
• Benjamin Rush also believed that many people with mental illness could be cured by being frightened
• Philippe Pinel (1745–1826)


  A primary figure in the movement for humanitarian treatment of people with mental illness in asylums
• In 1793, while the French Revolution raged, Pinel was put in charge of a large asylum in Paris known as La Bicêtre, where patients were shackled to the walls of their cells, by iron collars which held them flat against the wall
• In the nineteenth century, viewing the patients was considered entertainment, and people bought tickets to see them
• In the Lunatics Tower, which was constructed in Vienna in 1784, patients were confined in the spaces between inner square rooms and the outer walls, where they could be viewed by passersby
• Benjamin Rush


  Considered the father of American psychiatry
• Benjamin Rush believed that mental disorder was caused by an excess of blood in the brain, for which his favored treatment was to draw great quantities of blood from disordered individuals