A.    focusing on types of stressful events. Comes up with categories of events that most find to be dangerous or stressful

1. Primary Appraisal

2. Secondary Appraisal

3. coping problem focused vs emotion focused

1. basic decision on whether or not you think the event is negative or harmful in some way

2. make decision about whether or not you believe you could cope with the event.

3. come up with active ways to find a solution to the problem vs. ways to deal with your emotions about your situations (calling your best friend to talk to them about it)

Measuring stress

1.Social Readjustment Scale

2. Daily Hassles Scale

1. Major Life Events- developed to measure major life events that typically caused stress for people. 43 life events ranked in terms of stress- each item has a given point value. If you have multiple events of these happening each year then you are more likely to have problems. Positive life event could also be stressful like being pregnant.

2. measure how the little everyday annoyances we experience can influence our lives. Daily hassle but not a life stress. How we perceive and cope with these hassles is a better predictor of depression, anxiety and physical problems than the major life events.

A.    Seyle’s General Adaptation Syndrome

1.      Alarm- our autonomic nervous system kicks in gear

2.      Resistance- cope with the stressor through various strategies.

3.      Exhaustion- bodies resources are exhausted. Stage where physical or emotional problems usually come up.

1.Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

2. Psychoneuroimmunology

1.) 1.      Re-experience (flashbacks, nightmares, etc.)

2.      Avoidance (anything that associated with event)

3.      Isolation- feeling detached from others.

4.      Clip from Frontline Documentary 

2).immune system is impacted by our thoughts and beliefs

1. Cornary Disease

2. Type A Personality and Hostility

1. most widely studied. Number one cause of death and disability in US.  

2. associated with a risk of this heart disease. Being hostile towards people can cause this disease.

A.    Stress Secondary to Illness

1.      Asthma- difficulty breathing due to lung inflammation. Worrying about whether or not you will have an asthma attack will cause stress.

2.      Ulcers- inflamed area in the stomach lining causing severe pain/nausea. 

Gaining Control

1.  Behavioral

2. Cognitive

3. Decisional

4. Informational

5. Emotional

- doing something to reduce the impact of a stressful situation

2.     relates to restructuring or thinking differently about the situation or emotions

3.       weighing pros and cons and getting to a point where you can choose among different courses of action

4.      ability to acquire info about the stressful event

5.      deal with th emotions directly.

1.Catharsis

2. Crisis Debriefing

1. promoted as best way to deal with stress or anger in 1970. Releasing all of stress and anger like punching a pillow or breaking things. Does not decrease your actual stress or anger.

2. after severe event they have a group one session thing where people can talk about it immediately so that they don’t develop post traumatic stress disorder

I.                   Individual Differences

A. Hardiness

B. Optimism

C. Self-Enhancement

D. Spirituality

E. Avoid Rumination

A.    idea of viewing stress as a challenge rather than a threat

B.     people who are this tend to be more productive and focused

C.  people with this tend to do well with stress.

D.     can lead to a better job dealing with stress. Lower mortality rates. Improved immune system functioning, lower blood pressure, and better ability to recover from illnesses.

E.     relates to a continual focus on how bad you are feeling. Can lead to depression.

I.                   What is Mental Illness?

A.    Statistical Rarity-

B.     Subjective Distress- does it cause some sort of pain or distress

C.     Impairment- does it cause problems for that person in different parts of their life

D.    Societal Disapproval- does society have some judgement in disorder and decide if its negative in someway

E.     Biological Dysfunction- most disorders have an identifiable problem in the brain or physiological systems

Concepts for dealing with mental Illness

A. Demonic Model

B. Medical Model

C. Moral Treatment

D. Deinstitutionalize 

A.  . mental illness were proof that there were demons in the body

B.     mentally ill was viewed as having a disorder and needed treatment. Locked up in asylums.

C.   give patients more freedom and treat them more humanly in asylums. Locked away from the rest of society.

D.    developed really good medications in the 1950s. Put ppl on medications and allow them to leave the institutions.

I.                   Current Diagnosis: DSM-IV-TR

A.    Detailed criteria and Prevalence- which ones you want to rule out or consider instead. DSM provides prevalence- percentage of people in a population with a disorder

B.     Written by Team-

C.     Revised over Time-

D.    Five Axes of Functioning- when someone makes a diagnosis they need to include things like medical conditions, life stressors and daily functioning. Biological, Social, and Psychological approaches to this.

Problems with Current DSM-IV-TR 

 1.      Categorical vs Dimensional

2.      High Comorbidity-

 1.      Categorical vs Dimensional- You either have a disorder or you don’t have a disorder vs. Look at a dimension/continuum and see where people fall in the scale. Becomes very difficult to decide who or who doesn’t get the treatment.

2.      High Comorbidity- individuals with one diagnosis frequently have another diagnosis.

Legal terms

1. Insanity Defense

2. Incompentent to stand trial 

3. involuntary commitment

1. used less than 1% of all trials defendant does not know what they are doing

2. defendant is not confident to understand charges

3. threat to themselves or others

1.Anxiety Disorders- 

2. Panic Attacks and Panic Disorders

1.  most prevelant of all the disorders. 29% of ppl will meet criteria for at least 1 Anxiety disorder at some point in their lives

2. brief and intense emotional event and peaks quickly usually less than 10 minutes. Sweating, Dizzyness, Faintess, pounding heart. Impacts everyday behavior.

1.      Agoraphobia- fear of being in a place where escape is difficult or where it would be hard to get help if a panic attack occured

2.      Specific Phobia- limited to a specific thing like fear of an object or fear of a situation.

3.      Social Phobia- fear of public embarrassment or public humiliation. Fear of social avoidance. 

A.    Learning Models- We learn different things about phobias through basic operant classical conditioning

B.     Catastrophizing – believing that the absolute worst possible thing is going to happen to you even if risk is very small

C.     Current Events- lots of articles that the huge increase in anxiety is related to economic turmoil.

A.    Major Depressive Episode

1. events - triggered by loss of relationship or self esteem

2. reaction from others - depressed people get negative reactions

3. genes

4. behaviors - not do anything but be in bed

5. cognitions -Overgeneralizing and Learned Helplessness- everything is hopeless and I suck at life vs belief that they are helpless and that bad things that are happening to them are happening to them and they can’t do anything about it.

manic episode period 4 days mood elavations rapid movement can do anything is 85% heritable 

stressful events and even positive ones can trigger

dissociative disorders 
 Depersonalization-

Dissociative Amnesia-

Dissociative Fugue-

Dissociative Identity Disorder- 

A.    Depersonalization- frequent feeling of being detached from yourself. Watching yourself from outside of yourself.

B.     Dissociative Amnesia- Cannot recall personal info. Can’t be explained by things like disease or brain injury. Linked to stressful event.

C.     Dissociative Fugue-occurs after some stressful event. Lose knowledge of self and flee and assume a whole new identity.

D.    Dissociative Identity Disorder- multiple personality disorder. 2 or more distinct identities or personalities. 

ppl have disturbances in thinking, language, emotion, and in relationships

less than 1% of pop, delusions about gov. watching, hallucinations, odd postures, genetic risk

A.    Least Reliable- diagnosed of all mental disorders historical. First appear in adolescents or early childhood traits.

B.     Axis II- fixed patterns that will be there your whole life vs Axis I- ?

C.     Most Common Disorders- 10% of population has personality disorders and ppl with disorders don’t recognize they have it

D.    10 Disorders-

E.     Borderline Personality Disorder- occurs in about 2% of the population. 75% of ppl are female. Has unstable mood.

1.      Stable Instability- self destructive behavior and chaos

F.      Antisocial Personality Disorder- tends to have no guilt towards hurting other people.

1.      Psychopathic Personality- rules don’t apply to them.