2008-04-02
See the handout. In gender identity disorder, there's a critical period when zygotes become male or female, every zygote starts female, every eprson ever born, began as a female. Then, as a certain stage of development, testosterone poisoning, and that's when the embryo starts to become male. There are disorders in this, and some people are genuinely psychologically confused. And then there are eating disorders, like excessive concern about weight gain accompanied by extreme under eating, overeating, purging, and anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa. Sleep disorders like disrupted sleep, sleepwalking, fear of nightmares, fear of sleep, Provigil, insomnia, sleep-wake disorders. They are close to curing narcolepsy. Transient insomnia is inconvenient, yes, but insomnia can sometimes lead to psychotic reactions and delusions. Impulse control disorders include intermittent explosive disorder, kleptomania, patholoigcal gambling. The intermittent explosive disorder is not bipolar. Kleptomania know that they should not steal: they have a compulsion to steal and cannot stop. Adjustment disorders: extreme emotional reaction to a stressor that occured with or in a previous month (much greater than most people would experience). It's the same separation anxiety with any change in their life.
Axis-2 stuff. There's developmental (like Downs syndrome). Chromosome 23 has a leg missing from it. They have flat eyes, flat face, kind of round face, they have the tendency to be shorter, more stalky, it's a genetic blueprint that shapes their body that way. It also shapes their brain. They have mental retardation, lower language skills. The nicest people, the most open and loving people are those with down-syndrome: they live to about 30, but they are quite happy. Interesting syndrome. Personality disorders have three types (these are behaviors, not biochemical stuff): cluster A is emotion (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal -- inappropriate emotional reactions), cluster B is (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic), cluster C (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive). Antisocial means no emotional connections. Borderline personality is where you are absorbing personalities from people around you. Histrionic means highly emotional (too emotional). Narcissistic is self-absorbed. Cluster C has to do with your environment. OCD is controlling that environment.
Table-14-2 in the book lists personality disorders into groups and specific disorders. Also gives distribution by gender.
Anxiety disorders - common characteristics include: feeling tense, easily startled, constant worry, ANS arousal, it's the most common disorder, stress, or at least we think it's stress (caffeine causes stress, hm). Anxiety disorders are probably culturally driven, such as in western cultures. Imagine, how's it feel to walk into the classroom and forget that you have forgotten a test. How does it feel when you got the worst news of your life? Physically, how does it feel to be put on a stage when you are not prepared and everybody is looking at you? General Anxiety Disorder (GADs) people feel like that perhaps all the time. Your brain connects to a fear and spins like crazy. This is the easiest one to manage. We can help this one. Biofeedback, learning to breath, posture, focus on the positives for cognitive feedback, good drugs, got to have that. They have all of this combination. We can treat it. Tranquilizers can help. Anxiety disorders are most likely genetic, and we have learned this from twin studies.
Phobias include irrational fears that distress the person enough to disturb life, the most common is agoraphobia (fear of social open spaces - fear of places you might encounter other people) followed by various animals, and treatments include cognitive, behavioral and biological therapies. Phobias generally do not make sense. A phobia is so intense that a person thinks they are dying. It is not a mild fear. It is not a "oh, I am afraid on the roof, I might fall," and people with phobias will not think about certain things because they are getting tight chested and they have the deepest fear. Phobics do not live as long: they are in a constant state of arousal. You have to treat the arousal first, bring the body back to calm. When your ANS is too aroused, you are not healing your body, you have high blood pressure, tension, etc. It is extremely treatable. Phobias have a very high cure rate. Skinner thinks that phobias are conditioned behaviors, so we can treat phobias to the learning process. The more you expose people to what they are afraid of, the less they are feared of it, over time. The most effective treatment to phobia is exposure, to try to reverse the mental connection.
Panic disorder - sudden and unexplained attack on breathing, heart, and tightness in chest. A sense of immediate doom. This is not controllable. It is sudden, unexplainable, your body responds as if you are in a life or death situation. You can kind of feel the panic attack coming on. This is the run out of the room screaming, or drop to the ground and pass out.
Post-traumatic stress disorder -