Psychology 4 Marks Question

Forms of Eating disorders: Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia nervosa and Binge eating.

1. Anorexia nervosa: The individual has a distorted body image that leads her/ him to see herself/ himself as overweight. Often refusing to eat in front of others. The anorexic may lose large amount of weight and even starve herself/ himself to death.
2. Bulimia nervosa: The individual may eat excessive amounts of food, then purge her/ his body of food by using medicines such as laxatives or diuretics or by vomiting. The person often feels disgusted and ashamed when he/ she binges and is relieved of tension and negative emotion after purging.
3. Binge eating: There are frequent episodes of out-of-control eating.

Somatoform Disorders: These are conditions in which there are physical symptoms in the absence of a physical disease. In somatoform disorders, the individual has psychological difficulties and complains of physical symptoms, for which there is no biological cause. Somatoform disorders include pain disorders, somatisation disorders, conversion disorders, and hypochondriasis.

According to the Socio cultural model, abnormal behaviour is best understood in light of the social and cultural forces that influence an individual.

1. Socio-cultural factors such as war and violence, group prejudice and discrimination, economic and employment problems etc and rapid social change, put stress on most of us and can lead to psychological problems in some individuals.
2. Certain family structures are likely to produce abnormal functioning in members e.g. families which are over involved with each other have difficulty in becoming independent in life. Social and professional relationships also play an important role.
3. People who are isolated and lack societal support are likely to become more depressed and remain depressed longer than those who have good friendship.
4. Societal labels and roles assigned to troubled people also cause abnormal functioning.

Alternate Answer
When people break the norms of their society they are called deviant and ‘mentally ill’ and people may start behaving and living up to these labels.

Eating disorders leading to distorted body image:
Types of eating disorders.

• Anorexia nervosa.
• Bulimia nervosa.
• Binge eating.

Substance dependence - Intense craving for the substance addicted to.

• Shows tolerance, withdrawal symptoms and compulsive drug taking.
• The substance is psychoactive - Can change mood, thinking process and consciousness.

Substance abuse - Recurrent and significant consequences of use of substances.

• Damage to family, social relationship, poor work performance and physical hazards.
• Alcohol, cocaine, heroin are common substances abused.

The Diathesis Stress Model provides the most widely accepted explanation of abnormal behaviour.
Psychological disorders develop when a diathesis (biological predisposition to the disorder) is set off by astressful situation.
Components

1. Presence of some biological aberration which may be inherited.
2. The diathesis may carry a vulnerability to develop a psychological disorder. Person is at risk/predisposed to develop a disorder.
3. Presence of pathogenic stressor.

Substance Abuse - Significant and repeated (recurrent) adverse consequences related to the use of substances for example - alcohol, heroin, cocaine, etc.

• People using drugs have following effects.

1. Damage their family and social relationship.
2. Poor performance at work.
3. Create physical hazards.

Dissociation is a severance of the connections between ideas and emotions. It involves feelings of unreality, estrangement, depersonalization and sometimes a loss or shift of identity.
Different forms of Dissociative disorder:

1. Dissociative Amnesia.
2. Dissociative fugue.
3. Dissociative identity disorder.
4. Depersonalization.

Different types of aggressive behaviour exhibited by children:

1. Verbal aggression (name calling, swearing).
2. Physical aggression (hitting, fighting).
3. Hostile aggression (directed at inflicting injury to others).
4. Proactive aggression (dominating and bullying others without provocation).

According to Socio-cultural model, abnormal behaviour is shaped by:

• Poverty/Poor economic conditions.
• Family structure.
• Communication.
• Social network.
• Societal conditions.
• Societal labels and roles.
• War, violence and group prejudices, discrimination, unemployment problems and rapid social change.

Types of Hallucination:

1. Auditory hallucination.
2. Tactile.
3. Somatic.
4. Visual.
5. Gustatory.
6. Olfactory.

Obsession refers to the inability to stop thinking about a particular idea or topic, often these thoughts are unpleasant and shameful.
Compulsion refers to the need to perform certain behaviours over and over again such as ordering, checking, touching and washing.

Dissociation is a severance of the connections between ideas and emotions. It involves feelings of unreality. estrangement, depersonalisation and sometimes a loss or shift of identity.
Different forms of dissociative disorders

1. Dissociative Amnesia - Without any brain injury, amnesia for immediate past. selected part of the past or whole past.
2. Dissociative fugue - Unexpected travel away - from home, assumption of new identity.
3. Dissociative identity disorder - Multiple personalities, each may not be aware of the other.
4. Depersonalization - Dream like state, - separated from self and reality.

The diathesis-stress model provides the most widely accepted explanation of abnormal behaviour.
Psychological disorders devlop when a diathesis (biological predisposition to the disorder) is set off by a stressful situation.
Components:

• Presence of some biological abberation which may be inherited.
• The diathesis may carry a vulnerability to develop a psychological disorder. Person is at risk/predisposed to develop a disorder.
• Presence of pathogenic stressor.

Systematic desensitization
+ Wolpe
+ principle of reciprocal inhibition
interview
prepares hierarchy of anxiety - provoking stimuli relaxation asks the client to think about least anxiety provoking situation.

An intense, persistent irrational fear of something that produces conscious avoidance of the feared subject, activity or situation is called a phobia.

• Phobias can vary in degree and how much they interfere with healthy adaptation to the environment. Some otherwise normal and well-adjusted persons also have phobias.

Phobias are mainly of three types:

1. Specific phobias are those directed towards specific objects and situations and can be varied, e.g., acrophobia (fear of heights), pyrophobia (fear of fire), and hydrophobia (fear of water).
2. Social phobia is a fear of social situations, and people with this phobia may avoid a wide range of situations in which they fear they will be exposed to, scrutinized and possibly humiliated by other people.
3. Agoraphobia: is the term used when people developed a fear of entering unfamiliar situations.

Social learning theories work on the principle that our experience be it positive or negative such as phobia of lizards/ cockroaches are the result of learning process which start early in life. Small children can play with snakes; they are not aware of the danger involved. For them it is just another play object, as they grow up the fear of these things are instilled by their parents and society which is reinforced and accounts for reactions like phobia.

A psychoanalytical account for the same could involve attribution to some unconscious > or/ and repressed experiences. For example, suppose in your childhood you watched a group of roudy boys brutally torturing a cockroach/ snake, which eventually died, although you going about the incidence after some days, but it might remain in back of your mind forever, which might explain your phobia to cockroaches which might remind you of the incidence and disturbs you emotionally.

According to Freud, the anxiety and conflicts were believed to be converted into physical symptoms.

• Dissociation can be viewed as severance of the connections between ideas and emotions.
• Dissociation involves amnesia, feelings of unreality, estrangement, depersonalization and sometimes a loss or shift of identity.
• Sudden temporary alterations of consciousness that blot out painful experiences are a defining characteristic of dissociative disorders.

Four conditions are included in this group: Dissociative amnesia, Dissociative fugue, disseminative identity disorder and depersonalization.

1. Dissociative Amnesia: is characterized by extensive but selective memory loss that has no organic cause (e.g., head injury). Some people cannot remember anything about their past. Others can no longer recall specific events, people, places, or objects, while their memory for other events remains intact.

• This disorder is often associated with an over-whelming stress.

2. Dissociative Fugue:

Symptoms:

• Unexpected travel away from home or workplace.
• The assumption of a new identity.
• Inability to recall the previous identity.
• The fugue usually ends when the person suddenly ‘wakes up’ with no memory of the events that occurred during the fugue.

3. Dissociative identity disorder, often referred to as multiple personality, is the most dramatic of the dissociative disorders.

• It is often associated with traumatic experiences in childhood.
• The person assumes alternate personalities that may or may not be aware of each other.

4. Depersonalization involves a dreamlike state in which the person has a sense of being separated both from self and from reality.

• In depersonalization, there is a change of self-perception.
• The person’s sense of reality is temporarily lost or changed.
• ​​​​​​The patient experiences change in his body parts.

Psychological disorders are diagnosed on the basis of two classifications, i.e., DSM or IV and ICD-X.

• Classification of psychological disorders consists of a list of categories of specific psychological disorders grouped into various classes on the basis of some shared characteristics.
• International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) is classification of behavioural and mental disorders.
• ICD-10 refers to international classification of diseases and its 10th revision is being used.
• It is developed by WHO under one broad heading 'Mental Disorders' which is based on symptoms.

(The classification scheme is officially used in India)

• The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has published an official manual of psychological disorders:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, IVth Edition (DSM-IV).

• It Evaluates the patient on five axes or dimensions rather than just one broad aspect of 'mental disorder'.
• These dimensions relate to biological, psychological, social and other aspects.

Uses of Classification:

• Classifications are useful because they enable psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers to communicate with each other about the disorders.
• Helps in understanding the causes of psychological disorders and the processes involved in their development.
• It helps in Clinical diagnosis.