Out of Balance: Labeling Psychological Disorders
The psychiatry profession has created a mechanism for classifying psychological disorders, often referred to as DSM. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders uses behavioral definitions to help mental health workers diagnose p...
Getting It Together: Optimal Approach- Psychotherapy with Biomedical Therapy, The
Controlled, multi-site field studies by NIMH indicate that the best outcome for most psychological disorders is a combination of good psychotherapy and medication. Getting people into treatment is one of the hardest things in psychiatric and psychol...
Going to Extremes: Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a disorder in which people lose touch with reality. It commonly strikes in late adolescence after an apparently normal childhood. Thinking becomes fragmented; ideas are irrational, delusional and bizarre. Schizophrenia patients show...
Going to Extremes: Prenatal Factors and Schizophrenia
Maternal viral infections and stress during pregnancy appear to increase the likelihood of risk for schizophrenia. Stressors that occur after birth do not play the same role. Studies of identical twins, one with and one without schizophrenia reveal ...
Going to Extremes: Cognitive Factors and Mood Disorders
Researchers have isolated social and cognitive factors that contribute to mood disorder. For example the loss of a parent, particularly a mother, early in life is a powerful predictor of mood disorder. Early abuse experiences may also trigger the on...
Going to Extremes: Genetic Links to Mood Disorders
If a person has a first degree relative who suffers from bipolar disorder or depression they are significant risk for having a mood disorder themselves, as we see in the cases of Beverly and Kay Redfield Jameson. Stephen Hinshaw talks about wonderin...
Abnormal Psychology; Introduction to Psychology: Bipolar Disorder
With bipolar disorder, the mood landscape is more complex. In the first stage called hypo mania depressions are offset by periods of mild mania. For about 50% of people with bipolar illness, these early stages are an incredible rush of ideas and cre...
Abnormal Psychology; Introduction to Psychology: Depression, the World's Leading Cause of Disability
Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and the number one reason people seek help from mental health professionals. There is no way of predicting who will get depressed, although family history and previous depressive episodes are ...
Abnormal Psychology; Introduction to Psychology: Symptoms of Depression
Depression is not the normal ups and downs of mood that are part of life but getting stuck down and staying there for weeks. The physical and emotional symptoms of depression range from a sense of profound worthlessness and loss of interest in what ...
Getting It Together: Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud used a technique called psychoanalysis to discover the origins of his patient's illnesses, origins thought to deeply buried in the subconscious. For years, whatever the disorder, psychoanalysis was the therapy of choice. But as t...