5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition - Laura Lincoln Maitland [152]
• Depression with seasonal pattern, also known as seasonal affective disorder, is a type of depression that recurs, usually during the winter months in the northern latitudes. One hypothesis why this happens is that shorter periods of and less direct sunlight during winter disturbs both mood and sleep/wake schedules, bringing on the depression.
• Bipolar disorder is characterized by mood swings alternating between periods of major depression and mania, the two poles of emotions. Symptoms of the manic state include an inflated ego, little need for sleep, excessive talking, and impulsivity. Rapid cycling is usually characterized by short periods of mania followed almost immediately by deep depression, usually of longer duration. Newer drug treatments, including lithium carbonate, have proved successful in bringing symptoms under control for many sufferers.
Biological psychologists have evidence from family studies, including twin studies, that there is a genetic component involved in mood disorders. Too much of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is available during mania, too little of norepinephrine or serotonin during depression. Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil increase availability of serotonin by blocking reuptake. PET and fMRI scans reveal lowered brain energy consumption in individuals with depression, especially in the left frontal lobe, associated with positive emotions; and MRI and CAT scans show abnormal shrinkage of frontal lobes in severely depressed patients. Psychoanalysts attribute depression to early loss of or rejection by a parent, resulting in depression when the individual experiences personal losses later in life and turns anger inside. Behaviorists say that depressed people elicit negative reactions from others, resulting in maintenance of depressed behaviors. The social cognitive (cognitive-behavioral) perspective holds that self-defeating beliefs that may arise from learned helplessness influence biochemical events, fueling depression. Learned helplessness is the feeling of futility and passive resignation that results from inability to avoid repeated aversive events. According to psychologist Martin Seligman, a negative explanatory style puts an individual at risk for depression when bad events occur. When bad events happen, people with a negative (pessimistic) explanatory style think the bad events will last forever, affect everything they do, and are all their fault; they give stable, global, internal explanations. Cognitive viewpoints include Aaron Beck’s theory (cognitive triad) that depressed individuals have a negative view of themselves, their circumstances, and their future possibilities, and that they generalize from negative events; and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema’s rumination theory that depressed people who ruminate are prone to more intense depression than those who distract themselves.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a broad umbrella of symptoms and disorders characterized by psychosis or lack of touch with reality evidenced by highly disordered thought processes. Patients with schizophrenia can show abnormal thinking, emotion, movement, socialization, and/or perception. Because one cause of schizophrenia is an excess of dopamine, anti-psychotic drugs are effective in treating some symptoms in about 50% of the sufferers. A positive symptom of schizophrenia isn’t something that is good, but a behavioral excess or peculiarity rather than an absence. Delusions and hallucinations, two frequent signs of schizophrenia, are both positive symptoms. Delusions are erroneous beliefs that are maintained even when compelling evidence to the contrary is presented. Hallucinations are false sensory perceptions, such as the experience of seeing, hearing, or otherwise perceiving something that is not present. Lack of emotion, sometimes called flat affect; social withdrawal; apathy; inattention; and lack of communication are examples of negative symptoms of schizophrenia.