Question

Discuss the various psychological disorders that emphasize emotional states and thought disturbances.

Answer 1

• Bipolar disorder is characterized by shifts in mood as well as changes in activity and energy levels. The disorder often involves experiencing shifts between elevated moods and periods of depression. Such elevated moods can be pronounced and are referred to either as mania or hypomania.
• Mania is characterized by feeling overly excited and even hyper. Periods of mania are sometimes marked by feelings of distraction, irritability, and excessive confidence. People experiencing mania are also more prone to engage in activities that might have negative long-term consequences such as gambling and shopping sprees.
• Depressive episodes are characterized by feelings of intense sadness, guilt, fatigue, and irritability. During a depressive period, people with bipolar disorder may lose interest in activities that they previously enjoyed, experience sleeping difficulties, and even have thoughts of suicide.
• Psychosis is a mental health problem that causes people to perceive or interpret things differently from those around them. This might involve hallucinations or delusions.
• The two main symptoms of psychosis are:
• hallucinations – where a person hears, sees and, in some cases, feels, smells or tastes things that aren't there; a common hallucination is hearing voices
• delusions – where a person believes things that, when examined rationally, are obviously untrue – for example, thinking your next door neighbour is planning to kill you
• The combination of hallucinations and delusional thinking can often severely disrupt perception, thinking, emotion and behaviour.
• Anxiety disorders are those that are characterized by excessive and persistent fear, worry, anxiety and related behavioral disturbances. Fear involves an emotional response to a threat, whether that threat is real or perceived. Anxiety involves the anticipation that a future threat may arise.
• Generalized anxiety disorder which is marked by excessive worry about everyday events. While some stress and worry are a normal and even common part of life, GAD involves worry that is so excessive that it interferes with a person's well-being and functioning.
• Panic disorder is a psychiatric disorder characterized by panic attacks that often seem to strike out of the blue and for no reason at all. Because of this, people with panic disorder often experience anxiety and preoccupation over the possibility of having another panic attack.
• People may begin to avoid situations and settings where attacks have occurred in the past or where they might occur in the future. This can create significant impairments in many areas of everyday life and make it difficult to carry out normal routines.
  
• Acute stress disorder, which is characterized by the emergence of severe anxiety within a one month period after exposure to a traumatic event such as natural disasters, war, accidents, and witnessing a death.
• As a result, the individual may experience dissociative symptoms such as a sense of altered reality, an inability to remember important aspects of the event, and vivid flashbacks as if the event were reoccurring. Other symptoms can include reduced emotional responsiveness, distressing memories of the trauma, and difficulty experiencing positive emotions.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder can develop after an individual has experienced a stressful life event. Symptoms of PTSD include episodes of reliving or re-experiencing the event, avoiding things that remind the individual about the event, feeling on edge, and having negative thoughts. Nightmares, flashbacks, bursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, exaggerated startle response, and difficulty remembering aspects of the event are just a few possible symptoms that people with PTSD might experience.
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