Anxiety Disorders

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Anxiety Disorders

• Videos Psychology The Human Experience Modules
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• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts
  (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions)
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Constant tension unfocused, unproductive
  chronic worry ANS arousal
• Panic attacks
• Phobia
• persistent, irrational fear of a specific object
  or situation
• e.g., social phobia

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Causes of Anxiety Disorders

• Interaction of factors
• Socio-cultural (culture of fear?)
• Psychological
• Behavioral (CC OC)
• Cognitive (interpretation of harmless situations
  as threatening)
• Biological
• Heritability twin studies
• GABA
• in OCD, frontal lobe overactivity involved with
  directing attention

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Dissociative Disorders

• Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
• Controversy
• Causes?

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Personality Disorders

• Personality Disorders
• inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that
  impair social functioning
• e.g., borderline, antisocial (next slide)

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Antisocial personality disorder

• History of conduct disorder (e.g., habitual
  lying, torturing animals)
• Problems with impulsivity, failure to plan ahead,
  lack of remorse
• Seem to be less responsive to fearless (e.g.,
  less activity in amygdala and hippocampus to
  words that elicit fear compared to non-APD)
• In a study of 22,790 prisoners47 of men and 21
  of women were diagnosed with APD

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Mood Disorders
Mania
Video Psychology The Human Experience Module 38
Depression
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Depression subtypes

• Post-partum
• Seasonal affective disorder

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Rates and Course of Bipolar Disorder

• Lifetime risk of 1.3 for both genders
• 10 have rapid cycling bipolar disorder
• Persistent illness
• 24 relapsed within 6 months
• 77 have at least one new episode within 4 years
• High expressed emotion in the family
  (psychosocial stressor)

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Mood Disorders- Suicide
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Schizophrenia

• Schizophrenia
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• split mind
• severe psychotic disorder characterized by
• disorganized and delusional thinking (e.g., Lena)
• hallucinations (e.g., Terri)
• inappropriate emotions and actions

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Rates and Course

• About 1 in 100
• Course
• Onset late teens 30s earlier in men than
  women (who have a more favorable course)
• Prognosis
• Chronic, debilitating disorder for some
• Multiple hospitalizations
• 10-15 will commit suicide
• Many others do not show a progressive
  deterioration, but stabilize over the years

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Causes

• Biological

• Neurobiological Influences
• Increased dopamine activity
• Maternal virus during pregnancy?
• Increased Risk Based on Genetic Relatedness
  (next slide)

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Runs in families
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Brain Factors

• Several brain regions have abnormalities
• E.g., Ventricle Enlargement

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Psychosocial and cultural factors

• Social drift
• Stress and relapse
• Communication patterns (high E.E.)
• Cultural acceptance vs. stigmatization

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Using diagnosis on the job

• Cop Psychiatrists (Sci Amer -- segment 33)