Psychology
Understanding Psychological Disorders And Well Being
Course: Ba Program
Name: Tanvi Taneja
Roll no.: BAP/20/341
Semester: III (3rd semester)
Year: II (2nd year)
Submitted to: Dr. Poonam Vats
Psychological Causal Factors
●Some psychological Causal factors such as life events are mediated by the cascade of the
underlying biological changes that they initiate. One way in which these stressors may act is
by impacting Biochemical and hormonal balances and Biological rhythms.
Stressful Life Events As Causal Factors
•Severely stressful life events often serve as a precipitating factor for unipolar depression.
•Following are some of the episodic events involved in precipitating depression:
A. loss of a loved one
B. Serious threat to an important relationship
C. Threat to one's occupation
D. Severe economic loss
E. Serious health problems
•Separations through death and divorce are strongly associated with depression.
•Losses that involve an element of humiliation can be especially potent.
• An important distinction has been made between stressful events that are independent of
the person's personality or behavior, such as loss of a job or a loved one, or loss of property
because of natural disasters and dependent life events, that are caused by a person's
behavior and personality.
•Dependent life events play a major role In causing depression.
•People with depression have a distinctively negative view of themselves and the world
around them, which may be caused by the cognitive symptoms of their disorder.
•Pessimistic outlook leads them to evaluate events as Stressful.
•Several reviews of recent studies have shown that sophisticated measurement of life stress
that severely stressful episodic events play a causal role in about twenty to fifty percent of
the cases.
•People with depression who have experienced a stressful event show more severe
depressive symptoms than the people who haven't had experienced a stressful event.
•About 70 percent of the people with the first onset of depression have had a recent major
stressful event whereas only forty percent of the people with recurrent episodes have had a
recent major stressful event.
Mildly stressful events and Chronjc Stress
•Minor stressful events are not associated with clinically significant depression.
•Minor events may play a role in the onset of recurrent episodes rather than in initial
episodes.
•Chronic stress has been associated with the increased risk of the onset, maintenance and
recurrence of major depression.
Vulnerability and invulnerability factors in response to stressors
•Individual differences exist in how people respond to chronic stress and stressful events.
•Women at genetic risk for depression may experience more stressful life events and are
more sensitive to them.
•Women with genetic risks were three times more likely than those without a genetic risk to
respond to severely stressful events with depression.
People with lower genetic risk are more invulnerable to the effects of major depression.
Different types of Vulnerabilities for unipolar depression
Neuroticism is the primary personality variable that serves as a Vulnerability factor for
depression.
High levels of this trait may cause negative moods, including sadness, anxiety, guilt and
hostility.
Neuroticism predicts the occurrence of more stressful life events which lead to depression.
Some researchers attribute sex differences in depression to sex differences in nueroticism.
People low on positive affectivity feel unenthusiastic, dull, flat and bored. This makes them
prone to depression.
Negative patterns of thinking make people more prone to depression according to cognitive
diathesis model. People who attribute negative events to be internal, stable and global, are
more prone to depression than the people who attribute the same events as external,
unstable and specific.
Early Adversity As a Diasthesis
Following are the adversities in the early environment that could create a short term and long
term vulnerability to depression:
1. Family turmoil
2. Parental psychopathology
3. Physical or sexual abuse
4. Intrusive and harsh parenting
5. Coercive parenting
(i)Increases individuals' life sensitivity to stressful events during adulthood.
(ii) Following are the biological and psychological effects that could be caused by long term
effects of early environmental adversities:
A. Alterations in the regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary stress response system.
B. Lower self esteem
C. Insecure attachment relationships
D. Difficulty relating to peers
E. Pessimistic attributions
F. Being resilient
These stress inoculation effects seem to be mediated by strengthening socioemotional and
neuroendocrine resistance to subsequent stressors.
Following are the five major theories explaining the causes of unipolar depression:
A) Psychodynamic Theory
Frued and Karl hypothesized that when a loved one dies the mourner regresses to the oral
stage of development (when the infant cannot differentiate oneself from self) and introjects
or incorporates the lost person, feeling all the same feelings toward the self as toward the
lost person, these feelings were thought to include anger and hostility because as believed
by Frued, we unconsciously hold negative feelings like anger towards the person who have
power over us. Depression was hypothesized to be anger turned inwards, occurring as a
response to imagined or symbolic losses.
B) Behavioural theories
People become depressed when the responses no longer generate positive reinforcement or
when their rate of negative reinforcements increase.
Primary symptoms of depression like pessimism and low levels of energy cause the person
with depression to experience low rates of reinforcements.
C) Beck's cognitive theory
Beck hypothesized that the cognitive symptoms of depression often preceded and caused
the affective or mood symptoms of depression.
Diathesis stress theory
Negative conditions are central
(i)Depressogenic schemas
Underlying dysfunctional beliefs which are rigid, extreme and counterproductive.
(ii)dysfunctional beliefs
Activated by some form of stress.
These beliefs and schemas are developed during childhood or adolescence as a function of
one's negative experiences with her or his family, parents, or significant other, they are
thought to serve as the underlying diathesis of vulnerability.
Pattern of negative thoughts
Thoughts that often occur below the surface of awareness and involve unpleasant,
Pessimistic, predictions.
●Negative cognitive triad
a. Negative thoughts about the self
b. Negative thoughts about one's experiences and surroundings
c. Negative thoughts about one's future
Negative cognitive triad tends to be maintained by variety of cognitive biases or errors, which
involves negative self relevant information:
1. Dichotomous or all in none reasoning, which involves a tendency to think In
extremes.
2. Selective abstraction
A Tendency to focus on one negative detail of a situation, and ignoring other
elements of the situation.
3. Arbitrary inference
Jumping To conclusion based on little or no evidence.
Stressors are necessary to activate depressogenic schemas or dysfunctional beliefs that lie
dormant between episodes. Simply inducing a depressed mood, by playing a sad song, or
an emotional song could activate latent depressogenic schemas in an individual who was
previously depressed.
BIPOLAR DISORDERS
Following are the types of Bipolar disorders:
1) Cyclothymic disorder
a. Less serious version of full blown Bipolar disorder
b. Symptoms must persist for at least two years
c. Psychotic features like delusions and hallucinations aren't present
d. Dejected mood and loss of interest in pleasurable or common activities
e. Low energy, feelings of inadequacy
f. Social withdrawal
g. Brooding attitude
Hypomanic phase of cyclothymia
•Symptoms: Opposite of dysthymia
2) Bipolar I Disorder
Following are the six separate criteria for Bipolar I Disorder:
I. Single manic episode
II. Most recent episode hypomanic
III. Most recent episode manic
IV. Most recent episode mixed
V. Most recent episode depressed
VI. Most recent episode unspecified
3) Bipolar II disorder
Recurrent major depressive episodes with hypomanic episodes
A) Presence or history of one or major depressive episodes
B) Presence or history of at least one hypomanic episode
C) There has never been a manic or a mixed episode
D) The mood symptoms in criteria A and B are not superimposed for by schizophrenia,
Schizophreniform Disorder, Delusional Disorder, or Psychotic Disorder not otherwise
specified.
E) These symptoms cause clinical distress or impairment in social, occupational and
other important areas of functioning.
Manic episode
1. Elevated mood
2. Euphoria
3. Expansive moods
4. Occasional outbursts of extreme irritation or violence
4) Hypomanic episode
Milder versions of the same symptoms last at least four days, lesser impairment is
caused, hospitalization isn't required.
Bipolar disorder occurs equally in males and females and usually starts in adolescence and
young adulthood. Bipolar 2 disorder has an average onset of approximately five years more
than Bipolar 1 disorder.
People with Bipolar depressive episodes tend to show more liability, more psychotic
features, more psychomotor retardation, and more substance abuse.
Causal Factors In Bipolar Disorders
Biological Causal Factors
These factors include genetic, neurological, neurochemical, hormonal, neurophysiological,
neuroanatomical, and Biological rhythm influences.
GENETIC INFLUENCES
A. 8 to 10 % of first degree relatives of a person with a bipolar 1 illness can be expected
to have a bipolar disorder
B. Average concordance rate was about sixty percent of monozygotic twins and about
12 percent for dizygotic twins.
C. 67 percent of monozygotic twins with bipolar disorder had a co twin who shared the
diagnosis of depression.
D. 70 percent of genetic liability for Mania is distinct from the genetic liability for
depression.
Efforts to locate the chromosomal sites of the impacted gene or genes in this genetic
transmission of bipolar disorder suggests that it is polygenic.
NEUROCHEMICAL FACTORS
Bipolar disorder was hypothesized to be caused by the excess of norepinephrine and
serotonin, however, serotonin activities appear to be low in both depressive and manic
phases.
Dopaminergic activities in several brain areas may be related to manic symptoms of
hyperactivity, grandiosity, and euphoria.
ABNORMALITIES OF HORMONAL REGULATORY SYSTEMS
Bipolar depressed patients show evidence of abnormalities on the Dexamethasone
suppression test.
During a manic episode, the rate of DST has generally been found to be much lower.
Abnormalities of the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis because abnormalities in the thyroid
functioning is generally accompanied by changes in mood.
Thyroid hormone can precipitate manic episodes in patients with bipolar.
NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL AND NEUROANATOMICAL DIFFERENCES
●Blood flow to the left prefrontal cortex Is reduced during depression, during mania it is
increased in certain other parts of the prefrontal cortex. There are shifting patterns of brain
activity during mania and during depressed and normal moods.
●Deficits in the activity in the prefrontal cortex in Bipolar disorder seem to be related to
neuropsychological deficits that people with Bipolar disorder have with problem solving,
planning, working memory, shifting of att
ention sets, and sustained attention on cognitive tasks.
●Certain subcortical structures including the basal ganglia and amygdala, are enlarged in
Bipolar disorder. Increased activation in Bipolar patients in subcortical brain regions involved
in the emotional processing, such as the thalamus and amygdala.
