• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

13. C—Excessive dopamine is associated with positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations and delusions.

14. B—Estrella seems excessively lacking in self-confidence. She subordinates her own needs by buying clothes for Maria, and allows Maria to make decisions for her. These are characteristics of dependent personality disorder.

Rapid Review

Defining abnormal behavior—statistically rare, violates cultural norms, personally interferes with day-to-day living, and legally may cause a person to be unable to know right from wrong (insanity)

Causes of abnormal behavior by psychological perspective—

• Psychoanalytic: unresolved internal conflict in the unconscious mind.

• Behavioral: maladaptive behaviors learned from inappropriate rewards and punishment.

• Humanistic: conditions of worth imposed by society, which cause lowered self-concept.

• Cognitive: irrational and faulty thinking.

• Biological: neurochemical or hormonal imbalances; abnormal brain structures or genetics.

Brief descriptions of common psychological problems—

• Anxiety disorders include panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms include the panic attack: pain and tightness of muscles in chest or neck, feeling light-headed or faint, profuse sweating, clammy hands.

• Somatoform disorders include somatization disorder, conversion disorder, and hypochondriasis. Symptoms deal with the body and have no realistic physical cause for them.

• Dissociative disorders include dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, and dissociative identity disorder. Symptoms involve a sudden loss of memory (amnesia) or change in identity. The Freudian explanation is repression for hurtful situations too painful for the individual to deal with.

• Mood disorders include unipolar (depressive) and bipolar (manic-depressive) disorders. Symptoms involve primary disturbance in affect or mood that colors the individual’s entire emotional state.

• Schizophrenia is a category including four major types: disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, and undifferentiated. These disorders are characterized by psychosis—lack of touch with reality evidenced by abnormal thinking, emotion, movement, socialization, and/or perception. 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.

• Personality disorders are classified on DSM-IV Axis II and grouped into three clusters: odd/eccentric (including paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal), dramatic/emotionally problematic (including histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, and antisocial), and chronic fearfulness/avoidant (including avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive). Personality disorders are characterized by persistent patterns of maladaptive and inflexible traits in personality.

• Developmental disorders include attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, infantile autism, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa. Typically, they involve disturbances in learning, language, and motor or social skills showing up in infancy, childhood, or adolescence.

CHAPTER 17

Treatment of Abnormal Behavior

IN THIS CHAPTER

Summary: If a close friend or family member were experiencing severe anxiety that interfered with his everyday life, what credentials would you want a therapist for him/her to have?

This chapter focuses on mental health practitioners, their theoretical approaches, and how they deliver their services.

Key Ideas

Mental health practitioners

Brief history of therapy

Insight therapies—psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, humanistic

Behavioral approache

Cognitive-behavioral approaches

Biological treatments

Modes of therapy

Community and preventive approaches

Mental Health Practitioners

• A psychiatrist is a medical doctor (M.D.) and the only