Psychological Disorders: A Case Study

Psychological disorder: According to the textbook, Psychology: Principles in Practices, they are behavioral patterns or mental processes that can cause personal suffering. With that being said, wouldn’t that mean that if a person had a psychological disorder, they would have a disturbance within them, or more importantly, their brain? A psychological disorder, by definition, are the behavior patterns or mental processes that cause serious personal suffering or interfere with a person’s day to day life or routine. In contrast, a personality disorder is characterized as patterns of inflexible traits that can cause a disturbance in the afflicted person’s personal life and may cause distress. To fully understand disorders, psychologists

Provide a tentative diagnosis for each of the following case studies. Write at least one paragraph for each, justifying your answer in terms of the DSM-V criteria for that particular disorder. Remember, writing matters, as you will be judged on the quality of your communication as well as on the justification for the tentative diagnoses.

In today 's society, there is a great deal of research and practice about evidence based practice. Most of this is highly sought upon in the field of psychology, where evidence and decision making is key to accomplishing new ideas of treatments for people who retain psychiatric problems. The meaning of evidence-based practice in psychology is that it involves making very educated and supported decisions based on punctilious, unambiguous, and astute evidence (Rousseau & Gunia, 2016). With evidence-based practice, it assists in raising and deriving the issue of what evidence really is, the strength of the evidence, and how practitioners can improve the quality of their evidence (Rousseau & Gunia, 2016). Evidence is a major factor because it may either enhance or hinder the practitioner 's ability to make decisions and construct their practices on patients (Rousseau & Gunia, 2016). Evidence-based practice began in the 1980 's with the goal to combine the practices of scientific evidence with physician education and clinical practice. The issue with this was that medical schools did not have the ability to teach their own specific approaches to clinical problems (Rousseau & Gunia, 2016). As an effect to this cause, three main issues quickly arose about the effectiveness and quality of evidence-based practice. First, since other fields were advancing growth in

A study in 2008 showed that about 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffer from PTSD or major depression, and about 320,000 may have experienced at least a mild concussion or brain injury in combat (Zoroya). American society is witnessing a hasty rise in the need for treatment of PTSD for returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The most common treatment options for PTSD consists of psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of both. Psychotherapy can help victims by teaching them about the trauma and its side effects, using relaxation and anger management skills. It can also assist them with identifying possible guilt and shame about the incident and helping them cope with those emotions. The most common forms of medications used to treat PTSD are Zoloft and Paxil ("NIMH » Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)," n.d.).

A mental disorder, also known as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a diagnosis by a mental health professional of a behavioral or mental pattern that may cause suffering or a poor ability to function in life. Mental disorder consists of a wide range of things that affect mood thinking and behavior. Some of the more common forms of mental illness are major depression, anxiety disorder. Two of the more severe forms are bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Depression and bipolar disorder fall under the category of mood disorders. These disorders involve persistent feelings of sadness or periods of feeling overly happy, or fluctuations from extreme happiness to extreme sadness. Schizophrenia Is a psychotic disorder that causes a person

Although American service members have felt the lasting effects of combat throughout the history of the nation, it was not until 1980 that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was formally added to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Once referred to as “irritable heart” or “shell-shock,” PTSD made its way into the national spotlight in the years following the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan due to U.S. military members having difficulty reintegrating into civilian life. High rates of suicide, depression, and elevated levels of violent crime within the veteran community made the need to find an effective treatment of this disorder a top priority for the Veterans Health Administration. While it is widely accepted by medical professionals that there is no single, definitive cure for PTSD, many different methods have been cultivated within the past 15 years that make coping with it an easier process; some to a greater extent than others. While medications, namely antidepressants and benzodiazepines, usually find themselves at the forefront of any discussion regarding mental debilitation, they are not a one-size-fits-all solution to the problems that combat veterans face. As this particular disorder is attached to a certain memory or traumatic occurrence, alternative methods of rehabilitation such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE) have also shown promise in

The major psychological disorders fall under anxiety disorders, mood disorders, schizophrenia and other disorders such as eating, personality or dissociation disorders. By classifying these disorders, scientist can then describe and predict its future course. Mental health workers view psychological disorders as patterns of thoughts, feelings, or actions that are deviant, distressful and dysfunctional. The standard for what is deviant behavior is different in different cultures and in different context.

Maine and New Hampshire have allowed use of medical marijuana for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. According to a study in May 2013, PTSD sufferers exhibit anandamide levels lower than those of a healthy person. Anandamide is an endocannabinoid that can be linked to fear and anxiety (Rivas 130). Taking that into account, PTSD could worsen because of fewer cannabinoid receptors being triggered (Rivas 130-131). “In theory, using marijuana would boost concentrations of these beneficial cannabinoids, reducing symptoms of PTSD.” Dr. Alexander Neumeister of the Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology at New York University comments, “We know very well that people with PTSD who use marijuana often experience more relief from their symptoms than they do from antidepressants and other psychiatric medications” (Rivas 131). Medical marijuana can help reduce nightmares and increase quality of sleep as well as help depression and anxiety (Martin 37). This demonstrates the myriad of uses for medical

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder also known as PTSD occurs after life-threatening events. In the military those life threatening events can come from being in a combat zone. Soldiers who come back from combat are not required to have counseling, and if they do it is sometimes seen as a weakness. Getting our soldiers a minimum of three months of counseling to help with PTSD should be mandatory because, they will have stressors, suffer from mental and physical afflictions, and may feel that getting help will be a sign of weakness.

PTSD affects everyone differently, so developing a treatment plan that works best may take time. The most common types of treatment include psychotherapy and medication. Psychotherapy for PTSD usually lasts from six to twelve weeks before symptoms resolve depending on the individual. There are various forms of psychotherapy, but the most common form used to treat PTSD is cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy is used to help identify the triggers of symptoms and how to manage the symptoms. Cognitive behavioral therapy includes both exposure therapy and cognitive restructuring. Exposure therapy helps people face and learn to control their fear. For this type of therapy, people are gradually exposed to the trauma they experienced in a safe clinical setting by using imagining, by writing, and by physically visiting the place where the trauma occurred. Cognitive restructuring, on the other hand, helps people make sense of the bad memories related to the trauma and helps people look at what happened in a realistic way. The type of medication used for treating PTSD includes antidepressants. Antidepressants are prescribed to help control PTSD symptoms such as worry, anger, or sadness (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”, 2016). Symptom reappearance and intensification can occur in response to reminders of the original trauma, ongoing stressors, or new traumatic events. For older individuals, factors such as declining health, worsening cognitive function, and social isolations may worsen PTSD symptoms (American Psychiatric Association,

Psychological disorders are stated to be abnormalities of the mind, known as mental disorders (Klasco, 2011). Abnormalities of the mind cause persistent behaviors that affect an individual’s daily function and life (Klasco, 2011). The different types of psychological disorders include mood disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders (Klasco, 2011). The causes of these disorders are unknown, but factors that contribute to these disorders include childhood experiences, chemical imbalances in the brain, illnesses, heredity, stress, and prenatal exposures (Klasco, 2011). Psychological disorders can be serious and can be life-threatening

A psychological disorder, also known as a mental disorder, is a pattern of behavioral or psychological symptoms that impact multiple life areas and create distress for the person experiencing these symptoms. These symptoms are characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual 's cognitive, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental process underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. Approximately 26 percent of American adults over the age of 18 suffer from some diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. (Cherry)

Individuals with PTSD persistently re-experience their traumatic event in their thoughts, perceptions, imagery, dreams, illusions, hallucinations, and flashbacks. They may experience intense physiological distress or reactivity to cues of the traumatic event. These individuals persistently avoid any stimuli associated with the traumatic event and use other mechanisms to cope with any situation or cue that recalls or contradicts their emotional or cognitive responses to the traumatic event (American Psychiatric Association [DSM-IV-TR], 2000). Individuals with PTSD also experience persistent symptoms of increased arousal, such as irritability and difficulty concentrating. These disturbances can cause significant distress in social life, the work place, and family systems. According to the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV-TR), in order for individuals to be diagnosed with PTSD they must experience disturbances and symptoms for more than one month (2000). Symptoms can be specified as acute (less than 3 months), chronic (3 months or more), or with delayed onset; in which onset starts 6 months after the actual stressor (DSM-IV-TR, 2000).

`In the past, I worked in such a research setting, where if a person was found to meet criteria for opiate dependence they received treatment, however if even slightly short of DSM-IV criteria for the disorder they would have to look elsewhere. This was a continual concern for me, as the person who met criteria was not always the person with the most distress, and alternative treatments were not easy for people to find. Largely from this experience, I find the current categorical approach to classifying persons with psychopathology to be an imperfect system at best, with the primary advantage of being convenience when communicating with other professionals. I question whether this convenience comes at a severe cost to accuracy, the