• mental disorder: can be broadly defined as a persistent disturbance or dysfunction in behavior, thoughts, or emotions that causes significant distress or impairment
• medical model: an approach that conceptualizes abnormal psychological experiences as illnesses that, like physical illnesses, have biological and environmental causes, defined symptoms, and possible cures
• diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM): classification system that describes the symptoms used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from other, similar problems
• comorbidity: the co-occurrence of two or more disorders in a single individual
• biopsychosical perspective: explains mental disorders as the result of interactions among biological, psychological, and social factors
• diathesis-stress model: suggests that a person may be predisposed to a psychological disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress
• research domain criteria project: an initiative that aims to guide the classification and understanding of mental disorders by revealing the basic processes that give rise to them
• phobic disorders: characterized by marked, persistent, and excessive fear and avoidance of specific objects, activities, or situations
• specific phobia: an irrational fear of a particular object or situation that markedly interferes with an individual's ability to function
  1. animals
  2. natural environments
  3. situations
  4. blood, injections, injury
  5. other phobias like choking and vomiting
  • 12% of individuals will develop a specific phobia during their lives
• social phobia: irrational fear of being publicly humiliated or embarrassed
• preparedness theory: people are instinctively predisposed toward certain fears
• panic disorder: sudden occurrence of multiple psychological and physiological symptoms that contribute to a feeling of stark terror
• agoraphobia: a specific phobia involving a fear of public places
• generalized anxiety disorder GAD: generalized because the anxiety is not founded anywhere
  • chronic excessive worry accompanied by 3 or more of the following symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, concentration problems, irritability, muscle tension, sleep disturbance
• PTSD: a disorder characterized by chronic physiological arousal, recurrent unwanted thoughts or images of the trauma, and avoidance of things that call the traumatic event to mind
• mood disorders: mental disorders that have mood disturbance as their predominant feature
• major depressive disorder (unipolar depression): severely depressed mood and/or inability to experience pleasure that lasts for 2 or more weeks and is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness, lethargy, and sleep and appetite disturbance
• seasonal affective disorder: some experience recurrent depressive episodes in a seasonal pattern
• helplessness theory: part of the cognitive model of depression, maintains that individuals who are prone to depression automatically attribute negative experiences to causes that are internal, stable, and global
• bipolar: a condition characterized by cycles of abnormal, persistent high mood (mania) and low mood (depression)