Psychological Disorders

• most definitions have certain common features, often called the ‘four Ds’: deviance, distress, dysfunction and danger
• The first approach views abnormal behaviour as a deviation from social norms.
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, IV Edition (DSM-IV)
• International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which is known as the ICD-10 Classification of Behavioural and Mental Disorders.
• A wide range of biological factors such as faulty genes, endocrine imbalances, malnutrition, injuries and other conditions may interfere with normal development and functioning of the human body.
• Anxiety disorders have been linked to low activity of the neurotransmitter gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), schizophrenia to excess activity of dopamine, and depression to low activity of serotonin
• Genetic factors have been linked to mood disorders, schizophrenia, mental retardation and other psychological disorders.
• Generalised anxiety disorder, which consists of prolonged, vague, unexplained and intense fears that are not attached to any particular object.
• People who have phobias have irrational fears related to specific objects, people, or situations.
• Agoraphobia is the term used when people develop a fear of entering unfamiliar situations.
• People affected by obsessive-compulsive disorder are unable to control their preoccupation with specific ideas or are unable to prevent themselves from repeating an act.
• Obsessive behaviour is the inability to stop thinking about a particular idea or topic.
• Compulsive behaviour is the need to perform certain behaviours over and over again.
• PTSD symptoms vary widely but may include recurrent dreams, flashbacks, impaired concentration, and emotional numbing
• Somatoform disorders include pain disorders, somatisation disorders, conversion disorders, and hypochondriasis.
• Pain disorders involve reports of extreme and incapacitating pain, either without any identifiable biological symptoms or greatly in excess of what might be expected to accompany biological symptoms.
• Patients with somatisation disorders have multiple and recurrent or chronic bodily complaints.
• he symptoms of conversion disorders are the reported loss of part or all of some basic body functions
• Hypochondriasis is diagnosed if a person has a persistent belief that s/he has a serious illness, despite medical reassurance.
• Dissociative disorder involves feelings of unreality, estrangement, depersonalisation, and sometimes a loss or shift of identity. Sudden temporary alterations of consciousness that blot out painful experience.
• Dissociative amnesia : The person is unable to recall important, personal information often related to a stressful and traumatic report
• Dissociative fugue : The person suffers from a rare disorder that combines amnesia with travelling away from a stressful environment.
• Dissociative identity (multiple personality) : The person exhibits two or more separate and contrasting personalities associated with a history of physical abuse.
• Depersonalisation involves a dreamlike state in which the person has a sense of being separated both from self and from reality.
• People suffering from mania become euphoric (‘high’), extremely active, excessively talkative, and easily distractible.
• Delusions, disorganised thinking and speech, heightened perception and hallucinations, and inappropriate affect are the ones most often found in positive schizophrenia.
• Delusions of persecution believe that they are being plotted against, spied on, slandered, threatened, attacked or deliberately victimised.
• Delusions of reference in which they attach special and personal meaning to the actions of others or to objects and events.
• In delusions of grandeur, people believe themselves to be specially empowered persons
• In delusions of control, they believe that thought, behavior, and action is dictated
• Schizophrenics may have hallucinations, i.e. perceptions that occur in the absence of external stimuli.
• Negative symptoms are ‘pathological deficits’ and include poverty of speech, blunted and flat affect, loss of volition, and social withdrawal. People with schizophrenia show alogia or poverty of speech, i.e. a reduction in speech and speech content.
• Some show no emotions at all, a condition known as flat affect.
• Also patients with schizophrenia experience avolition, or apathy and an inability to start or complete a course of action.
• People with schizophrenia also show psychomotor symptoms. They move less spontaneously or make odd grimaces and gestures.
• People in a catatonic stupor remain motionless and silent for long stretches of time.
• Catatonic rigidity, i.e. maintaining a rigid, upright posture for hours.
• Catatonic posturing, i.e. assuming awkward, bizarre positions for long periods of time.
• externalising disorders, or undercontrolled problems, include behaviours that are disruptive and often aggressive and aversive to others in the child’s environment.
• The internalising disorders, or overcontrolled problems, are those conditions where the child experiences depression, anxiety, and discomfort.