Delving into Psychological Disorders (Essay Sample)

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
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Psychological Disorders
Psychological Disorders
A psychological disorder is more commonly known as a mental disorder. These are patterns of behaviour and psychosomatic symptoms which affects several areas of a person’s life. Psychological conditions are diagnosed by using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This approach an extensively applied arrangement for diagnosing mental disorders and sets standardized criteria for diagnosis (Schielke, Brand and Marsic, 2017).This research essay covers psychological disorders and psychological therapies. It touches on elements of the disorders such as the abnormalities, mood disorders, and dissociative disorders. It also touches on past and present psychological therapies including humanistic therapies and biomedical therapies.
Abnormalities
In Psychology, an abnormality is when a person’s traits, thinking, and behaviours are statistically different from societal norms. The four models of abnormality are biological models, psychological models, sociocultural perspective, and bio-psychosocial perspective. First, the biological model is the only model of abnormality that is not based on psychological principles. This theory is the assumption that if the brain and biochemical are in some way ¨unmoral” that it causes these mental disorders; therefore, treating any mental abnormalities would be biological and should be handled like any other physical illness. Second, the psychological model is when the brain is distributing inaccurate information, assumption, or attitudes to a person who then makes overgeneralized and negative conclusions. This theory normally attributes causes to the individual’s problems, which makes it difficult to treat. Next, the sociocultural perspective is the theory that an individual’s abnormal behaviours occur because of cultural pressures. And lastly, the bio-psychosocial perspective classical explains abnormal mental conditions as the consequence of interaction between social, biological and psychological factors. This model states that most disorders are caused by both internal and environmental factors (Martin, Kronbichler and Richlan, 2016).
Mood Disorders
Mood disorders are marked turbulences in an individual's emotive state. These disturbances distress the person’s thinking, social relationships, and behaviour. This type of disorder occurs when an individual experiences temperaments which lay at either extreme of the scale. The two basic forms of mood syndromes are unipolar and bipolar. Individuals who experiences unipolar are major depressive whereas the individuals who experience bipolar experience both ends (Jaekel, Baumann, Bartmann and Wolke, 2018). Major depressive disorder is better known as clinical depression. This disorder affects how a person feels, thinks, and behaves. This results in a variety of emotional and physical problems. Major depressive disorder also makes it difficult for people to do normal tasks and oftentimes takes away a person's will to live. Depression can require long-term treatment and is treated with medication, psychotherapy, or both(Jaekel, Baumann, Bartmann and Wolke, 2018). Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression. It makes thrilling mood swings that take an individual from an emotional high to an emotional low. These mood swings can affect ones activities, sleep, behaviours, as well as thinking ability. Factors which cause bipolar disorder in a person are linked to biological differences in the person's brain and/or genetics (Jaekel, Baumann, Bartmann and Wolke, 2018).
Dissociative Disorders
A dissociative disorder can be referred as an involuntary escape from the reality usually caused by a disconnection amid a person’s feelings, identity, memory as well as consciousness. This disorder normally develops from consequences of a traumatic happening in one’s life. Two chief dissociative conditions are dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity syndrome. Dissociative amnesia’s symptoms involve having difficulty remembering important information about oneself. This particular disorder usually occurs around a particular life event the person is trying to forget. Similarly, Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is characterized as having an alternation between multiple identities. An individual with this disorder would feel like one or more voices are controlling his head. These voices have unique names, voices, and mannerisms. People with DID will experience gaps in memory when these voices ¨take over¨. Treatment for these disorders normally consists of psychotherapy and medication. Treatment plans are normally difficult to find for these disorders, but once they are established, the individual can live a fairly normal life (Schielke, Brand and Marsic, 2017).
Psychological Therapies
Psychological therapies have been around for a very long time. However, most of the earliest methods involve cruel practices to rid patients of their illnesses. Today, we have two different categories of treatments: insight and action based therapies. Insight therapies involve the therapist making the client more aware of themselves so that the person can understand what is going on with them and live a better life. Conversely, action based therapy’s main goal is to reinforce desirable behaviours and eliminate unwanted ones (Fisher et al. 2019).
Humanistic Therapies
Humanistic therapy believes that every human is inherently good, and this therapy form focuses on concepts like free will, creativity, and potential. This type of therapy encourages self-exploration instead of studying others’ behaviour. Three different types of humanistic therapy include person-centred therapy, Gestalt therapy, and motivational interviewing. First, person-focused therapy utilises a ¨non-authoritative¨ method and enables people to lead the conversation and by doing so, they figure out their own solutions. The therapist is just there to encourage the clients and to help them through the process (Armstrong, Foster, Brown and Davis, 2017). Next, Gestalt therapy is an experimental form of humanistic therapy and was originally made for an alternative to the traditional psychotherapy. This type of therapy involves techniques to enhance the client's awareness, freedom, and direction. Gestalt is a German word that means shape or form, which goes with this therapy because its purpose is to reshape the individual. Lastly, motivational interviewing is a counselling approach that is focused and goal-oriented. This method’s purpose is to change the client’s behaviour (Armstrong, Foster, Brown and Davis, 2017).
Biomedical Therapies
Biomedical therapies focus on treating and reworking the brain. These types of treatments are meant to help the patient’s psychological disorders by using methods such as psychopharmacology, electroconvulsive therapy, and psychosurgery. Psychopharmacology is the use of medications to address neurological imbalances in the brain that may be causing mental illnesses. Electroconvulsive therapy is a therapy where a seizure is induced by adding electrical current to the patient’s brain. It is not completely clear how this treatment works, but studies have shown that the shock reduces the number of neural connections that causes these mental illnesses and in turn new and healthy connections form (Acosta et al., 2017).
DSM and ICD Diagnostics
Basically, the ICD is an international classification of diseases, and the "9" or "10" designations mean that each one is the 9th or 10th or its kind. The CM means "clinical modification". On the other hand, Procedure of the coding Structure of ICD-10-PCS is voted for the replacement of ICD-9-CM (Volume 3) for inpatient application in hospitals. According to Health care information management, Inc. (2019), “ICD–10–PCS has no direct relationship to the basic ICD–10 diagnostic classification, which does not include procedures, and has a totally different structure from ICD–10–CM Its only intention is to identify inpatient facility services in a way not directly related to physician work but directed towards allocation of hospital services” Krueger, 2016 ). About differences, ICD-10 has more classifications of diseases with over seventy-two thousand (72,000) procedural codes while ICD-9 has over fourteen thousand (14,000) codes (Krueger, 2016).
According to Krueger (2016) “ICD-9 codes have between three to five digits that begin with either a letter or number and a decimal point after the third digit. The book on ICD-9 shows specific levels of each code while ICD-10 codes have seven digits length codes”. The first three digits of ICD-10 codes correspond to ICD-9 code with a decimal point at the third digit; however, the next digit after the decimal point has a specified meaning meant for surgical and medical procedures which are for specific body parts. This codes and qualifiers are needed for medical billing.
Moreover, ICD-10 CM codes representing diagnosis also has seven digits.
Structural, functional and developmental specifics of the most recent edition of the DSM
Structural specifics of DSM-5: There are a total of five editions of DSM to date. Currently, the most recent edition of DSM is DSM-5. The structural changes of DSM-5 took place in 2013 which was not too different from DSM-3. The changes include disorders such as adjustment disorder, factitious disorder, and mental disorder. DSM-5 structure shows the inter-relationship wi...