Looking at abnormal behaviors from within their different
components provides psychologists additional information in which to analyze
the effect of a specific disorder.
However, it can also help to identify any overlapping factors that can
be useful in identifying the different disorders and their treatments. To analyze anxiety, mood/affective, and
dissociative/somatoform disorders one must turn to the individual components
that feed into them, namely biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral.
Analyzing Anxiety
Disorders
Biological Components
Anxiety disorders affect the entirety of the human body
because of the extensive physiological reactions that take place as a reaction
to a perceived danger. Not only does the
autonomic nervous system (ANS) that regulates the involuntary bodily system
activate but the sympathetic nervous system (e.g., adrenal glands, and stress
hormones) and the parasympathetic system (e.g., calming and energy functions)
activate too; in essence putting the entire body on full alert.
Emotional Components
Irrational fears or unacceptable impulses thought to be
repressed, anxiety disorders stem from a form of internal or external childhood
fear or situation and, according to Hansell and Damour (2008), the “anxiety
symptoms [are] based on the defense mechanisms associated with them” (p. 153).
Cognitive Components
Misinterpreted (e.g., overestimated or underestimated)
dangers or consequences create dysfunctional cognitive schemas, which give way
to negative automatic thoughts. It is
known that these negative thoughts add to specific anxiety disorders (e.g.,
GAD, panic disorder, specific, and social phobia, agoraphobia, OCD, and
PTSD). Furthermore, such thinking also
leads to avoidant behaviors that prevent the extinction of anxiety and continue
to associate his or her disorders (Hansell & Damour, 2008).
Behavioral Components
Anxiety disorders are derived through three distinct
behavioral components: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and
modeling. All three components are based
on a learning method; however, how that learning takes place determines how the
behavior takes shape. With classical
conditions learning creates automatic mental associations, such as the white
rat with a freighting noise. Operant
conditioning is based on reinforcement, which explains how a predisposition
(negative thought) can be reinforced into a phobia. In modeling people simply learn by watching
what others do and how they react, thus good and bad behaviors can be passed
on.
Analyzing Mood/Affective
Disorders
Biological Components
Mood and affective disorders include genetic, neurochemical,
and hormonal contributions, which indicate that depression and depressive
disorders are likely inherited (Hansell & Damour, 2008). Studies indicate those with the 5-HTT gene are
predisposed to depression, which can surface under specific conditions (e.g.,
heightened life stressors) and that severely depressed individuals have high
blood cortisol levels. In addition,
bipolar disorders, while shown to be highly genetic “seem to be linked to
anomalies in the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and cerebellum” (Soares &
Innis, 2000; as restated by Hansell & Damour, 2008, p. 183).
Emotional Components
Freud’s Mourning and
Melancholia (1917) provided psychologists with the first terms of depression
(Hansell & Damour, 2008, p. 196). Depression
causes people to react to specific situation as though he or she were in
mourning; focusing on the losses, disappointments, and excessive frustrations
of life rather than the postive aspects.
Cognitive Components
Negative cognitive triad is a pattern of negativity thinking
that a person develops. Depression prone
individuals find themselves automatically generating negative thoughts that
perpetuate depressive behaviors and create a type of learned helplessness.
Behavioral Components
Negative behaviors are thought to be the result of poor
social skills, low reinforcement potential, such as inability to enjoy positive
events, and a hypersensitivity to negative events. Behavioral and cognitive factors combine to
contribute to vicious depressive cycle (Hansell & Damour, 2008).
Analyzing Dissociative/Somatoform
Disorders
Biological Components
People who suffer from dissociative and somatoform disorder
have family with similar experiences.
According to de Wall et. al., (2004) as restated by Hansell and Damour
(2008),
“many people who
suffer from somatoform disorders also experience comorbid depression and
anxiety, sometimes as a result of incapacitation due to conversion,
somatization, or pain symptoms, constant hypochondriacally health concerns, or
social and occupational isolation that typically accompanies body dysmorphic
disorder” (p. 240).
Emotional Components
Hysterical conversion, explains Hansell and Damour (2008) is
a term used by Freud and Breuer to explain those uncomfortable emotions that
change into physical symptoms. Of course
Freud was referring to sexual tensions, but psychodynamic theorists explain
that these feelings come from any emotional repression such as that of “anger,
jealousy, sadness, or sexual excitement” (p. 237). Therefore, physical distress can be a form of
unconscious emotional distress.
Cognitive Components
Emotional distress finds an outlet through dysfunctional
thinking in turn maintaining somatic symptoms.
Hyper sensitizing one’s aches and pains intensifies them into
catastrophic terms, in turn creating anxiety and feelings of distress. However, cognitive restructuring is possible
to improve irrational and problematic thinking (Hansell & Damour,
2008).
Behavioral Components
As science continues to identify the connection between the
mind and body perhaps there will be a better understanding of the link between
the two. Furthermore, operant
conditioning indicates that disassociating oneself emotionally is a reinforced
behavior. In similar situations the associations
between somatization disorders and disassociation disorders have been linked to
sexual abuse as a child or other sexual or physical trauma as an adult. Unexplained physical complaints have led
doctors to ask questions about abusive histories.
Conclusion
Learning about the behavioral disorders and the components
that affect specific disorders allows a more comprehensive understanding of the
biological predispositions that provide people with the ability to
function. It also provides a better
understanding of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development components
as well that enable a complete picture of each specific disorders effect on
one’s life. As a student breaking down each
components role enables a better opportunity to understand the devastating
effects these disorders have on the physiology of people’s lives.
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