lecture 13

• Psychopathology


  The study of mental disorders and abnormal behaviour
• Mood disorders


  • Depression
  • Dysthymic Disorder
  • Major Depressive Disorder
• Depression


  Low, sad state of mind in which people feel overwhelmed
• Dysthymic Disorder


  "Bad state of mind" - lasts for about 2 years (1 year in children)
• Major Depressive Disorder


  Depressed mood that is significantly disabling, more severe than Dysthymic Disorder
• Most common health care topic searched on internet per year (19%)
• Other common health care topics searched


  • Allergies/sinuses (16%)
  • Bipolar disorder (14%)
  • Arthritis/rheumatism (10%)
• Unipolar depression


  Varies between period of normality & depression
• Bipolar disorder


  Varies between periods of mania & depression
• Mania


  Elation and frenzied energy
• Cyclothymic Disorder


  Emotional highs and lows, not as marked as bipolar
• Seasonal Affective Disorder


  Depression at same time every year
• Treatments for mood disorders


  Psychotropic drugs that act on the brain - antidepressants
• Explanations for depression


  • Low norepinephrine and serotonin activity (neuroscientists)
  • Stressors in environment, lack of social support (socio-cultural theorists)
  • Learned helplessness, attribution-helplessness theory, cognitive triad (Beck) (cognitive-behavioural theorists)
• Schizophrenia


  Disordered thoughts, perceptions and motor abnormality
• 1 in 100 people will suffer from schizophrenia during their lifetime
• Equal numbers of men and women with schizophrenia, 3% divorced/separated, 2% single, 1% married
• Positive symptoms of schizophrenia


  • Delusions: false beliefs
  • Hallucinations: fake sensory perceptions
  • Inappropriate affect: emotions not suited to particular environment

  
• Negative symptoms of schizophrenia


  • Flat affect: diminished facial expression, apathetic
  • Loss of volition, social withdrawal
  • Poverty of thought: lack of spontaneous speech
• Subtypes of schizophrenia


  • Paranoid type: main symptoms are delusions and possibly auditory hallucinations
  • Disorganised type (hebephrenic schizophrenia): combination of disordered thoughts and flat affect
  • Catatonic type: immobility or agitated purposeless movements
• Cluster A Personality Disorders: Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal (related but not the same)
• Biological explanations for schizophrenia


  • Dopamine hypothesis: excess activity at dopamine synapses
  • Structural: larger ventricles in the brain
  • Functional: reduced function in frontal lobes
  • Decreased grey and white matter volumes in hippocampus, thalamus, frontal lobes