Mental health articles
OF mental health care and mentally ill
CBT Interventions for PTSD
The information processing model has yielded a productive, theoretically grounded approach to research into the clinical efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for PTSD. CBT approaches to treating PTSD include exposure therapy, cognitive therapy, cognitive processing therapy, stress inoculation training, systematic desensitization, assertiveness training, and biofeedback and relaxation training. To date, exposure therapy is the most […]
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Behavioral Approaches to PTSD
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for PTSD. Early behavioral conceptual models of PTSD were largely based on the two-factor learning theory of psychopathology originally proposed by Mowrer. As applied to PTSD, two-factor conditioning models posit that fear and other aversive emotions are learned through association via mechanisms of classical conditioning. Such fear conditioning is the first factor in […]
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Undifferentiated somatoform disorder criteria and symptoms
Undifferentiated somatoform disorder was apparently created to capture a sizable proportion of patients with multiple, chronic, physical symptomatology similar to somatization disorder, but do not meet the eight physical-symptom requirement. This diagnosis is given to persons with one or several medically unsupported physical complaints that are of at least 6-months duration and are not due […]
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Disorders: Mental or Medical?
A widespread controversy involves the medical model of mental illness as a ‘‘disease.’’ Interestingly, definitions of disease or illness have the same conceptual difficulties in disentangling a scientific or neutral definition from value statements as definitions of abnormal behavior. All disorders are usually undesirable and harmful according to social values, but disorders are more than […]
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Mental Disorders: External Behavior or Internal
Mental Disorders: External Behavior or Internal Mechanisms Two frequent criticisms of Wakefield’s concept of internal mechanisms are that the notion is both ‘‘mentalistic’’ (a term that drives strict behaviorists crazy) and biological. Most psychologists would agree that what goes on inside a person is important. However, important scientific methods and procedures must be considered when […]
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Diagnosis and Phenomenology of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Diagnosis and Phenomenology Diagnosis of the Disorder Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most severe and chronic of the anxiety disorders delineated in the current psychiatric nomenclature. It is characterized by the presence of obsessions or compulsions, although the majority of patients report both types of symptoms. An obsession is any recurrent, intrusive thought, […]
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Mental Disorders: Scientific Concepts or Value
Judgments? It is true that many forms of abnormal behavior are normative concepts based on value judgments. Most mental disorders are negative conditions that justify social concerns, but defining them in terms of pure value judgments allows classifying many socially disapproved behaviors as disorders when they clearly are not. Incarcerated Soviet dissidents, ‘‘childhood masturbation disorder,’’ […]
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Psychological Theories of Sleep
Sleep is an inhibition, a resting state of consciousness. Mental activity or consciousness is dependent upon peripheral incoming stimuli, and when these are absent, a lowering of mental activity follows and sleep results. According to this theory, if all peripheral stimuli are cut out, sleep will naturally follow. When we attempt to sleep, we voluntarily […]
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Side effects of antipsychotics
Side effects Typical antipsychotics are sometimes classified, in the British National Formulary for example, by their side-effect profi le. This is dependent on their propensity to act not only as an antagonist at dopamine D2 receptors but at other dopamine receptors and other types of receptors such as alpha-1 adrenaline, H1 histamine and M1 acetylcholine […]
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antipsychotics medication
Antipsychotic medication, as the name implies, is used to treat symptoms of psychosis. Antipsychotics were also known as neuroleptics and in times past were referred to, somewhat misleadingly, as major tranquilisers. Chlorpromazine, the fi rst of the antipsychotics, was introduced in 1952 and was the fi rst effective treatment for psychosis. The impact of this […]
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