8 Clinical Psychology

Deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviours.

A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

The concept that diseases have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital.

a classification system that describes the features used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from other, similar problems.

psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviours that reduce anxiety.

an anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations.

an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation.

intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such. formerly called social phobia.

fear or avoidance of situations such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic

an anxiety disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts and/or actions.

an anxiety disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.

positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises.

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes.

a mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or a medical condition, two or more weeks of significantly depressed moods, feelings of worthlessness, and diminished interest or pleasure in most activities.

a mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.

a mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.

compulsive fretting; overthinking about our problems and their causes

a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions.

a psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions.

false beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.

false sensory experience, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus

a psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause.

a rare somatoform disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found.

A disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease. Formerly called hypochondriasis.

disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.

a rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities. Also called multiple personality disorder.

an eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15% or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve

an eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually of high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise

frequent episodes of excessive eating, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging, fasting, or excessive exercise that marks bulimia nervosa

psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behaviour patterns that impair social functioning.

A personality disorder in which the person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members; may be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist.

prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology

an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy

Sigmund Freud's therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences and the therapist’s interpretations of them released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight

in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety laden material

in psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviours and events in order to promote insight

in psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent)

therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight

a variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing the client's awareness of underlying motives and defenses

a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate client's growth. Also called person-centered therapy.

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers' client centered therapy

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviours

a behaviour therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviours; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning

behavioural techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear or avoid

a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias

an anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to simulations of their greatest fears such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking

a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant states (such as nausea) with an unwanted behaviour (such as drinking)

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort or exhibiting a desired behaviour and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats

therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions

a confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people’s illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.

a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy with behaviour therapy

therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interactions.

therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual's unwanted behaviours as influenced by or directed at other family members

the tendency for extreme or unusual scores to regress toward their average

a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies

clinical decision-making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences

a bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and a client, who work together constructively to overcome the client’s problem.

the personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behaviour

drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation. depress the central nervous system and reduce anxiety and tension by elevating the levels of GABA neurotransmitter. can be addictive and can become a linked behaviour with stress response

drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters. examples: prozac, zoloft, paxil

a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient

the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behaviour

invented by Egas Moniz, a now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal loves to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain

dysfunctional, distressing and deviant

advocated for moral treatment of those suffering of psychological disorders. insisted that madness was not due to demonic possession but an ailment of the mind

the scientific study of mental illness or disorders

cause and development of a disorder (pathology)

identifying (symptoms) and distinguishing one disease from another

assumes that biological, socio-cultural and psychological factors combine and interact to produce psychological disorders

• persistent and uncontrollable tenseness and apprehension

• automatic arousal

• inability to identify or avoid the cause of certain feelings

• sudden, minute-long episodes of intense dread

• may include feelings of terror, chest pains, choking and other frightening sensations

repetitive, unwanted thoughts that cause distress

urges to engage in senseless, repetitive rituals

• haunting memories

• nightmares

• social withdrawal

• jumpy anxiety

• sleep problems

• responsiveness to threats

lies between a blue mood and a major depressive disorder

• difficuty with decisions/concentration

• hopeless feelings

• low self-esteem

• reduced energy

• problems sleeping

• appetite regulation issues

• depressive symptoms

  • gloomy

  • withdrawn

  • inability to make decisions

  • tired

  • slowness of thought

• manic symptoms

  • elation

  • euphoria

  • desire for action (can be risky)

  • hyperactive

  • multiple ideas

1. stressful experiences

2. negative explanatory style

3. depressed mood

4. cognitive and behavioural changes

• inattention

• hyperactivity

• impulsivity

• can include cutting, burning, tattoing or hitting oneself

• may be done to alert others to a need of help, relieve self-guilt, distract from stress or fit in with peers

• 45-64-year-olds

• transgender

• alcohol use disorder

• Wednesdays, May/April

group of disorders marked by irrationality, distorted perception and lost contact with reality

• type of schizophrenia

• slow to develop

• recovery is doubtful

• usually display negative symptoms

• type of schizophrenia

• rapidly develops

• recovery is better

• respond better to drug theories

• usually show positive symptoms

• disturbed perceptions

  • hallucinations

    • false sensory experience

  • delusions

    • false beliefs, paranoia

  • lack of selective attention

• disorganized speech

  • word salad

• inappropriate and diminished emotions

  • impaired theory of mind

• inappropriate behaviours present

  • eg. may laugh at the news of someone dying, continually rub an arm, rock a chair, continued humming

• appropriate behaviours absent

  • eg. show no emotion at all

• catatonia

• flat affect

belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology

• show more dopamine receptors to create positive symptoms

• can be treated with dopamine blockers

the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work

• having a sense of being unreal

• being separated from the body

• watching yourself as if in a movie

conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts and feelings

fixation on physical symptoms like pain and fatigue

• feeling that one is not comfortable in their body and has an irrational understanding of what their body looks like

• usually accompanies eating disorders

sensitive to rejection