Mental Disturbances And Abnormal Behaviours Listed In

The Dsm-Iv Essay, Research Paper

The major Mental Disturbances and Abnormal Behaviours listed in the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and their treatments are as follows:1. Anxiety disordersIt is the disorders characterized by anxiety and avoidance behaviour. Anxiety is a vague, general uneasiness or feeling that something bad is about to happen. It can be associated with a particular situation or object, or it may be free-floating i.e. not associated with anything specific. The examples of Anxiety disorders are generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.Treatment for Anxiety disorders:Many people with anxiety disorders can be helped with treatment. Therapy for anxiety disorders often involves medication or specific forms of psychotherapy. Although medications do not cure, but they can be very effective in relieving anxiety symptoms. There are more medications available than ever before to treat anxiety disorders, thanks to the research by scientists at NIMH and other research institutions. Most of the medications that are prescribed to treat anxiety disorders, the doctor usually starts the patient on a low dose and gradually increases it to the full dose. Every medication has side effects, but they usually become tolerated or diminish with time. The doctor may also advise the patient to stop taking the medication and to wait a certain time e.g. a week or longer for certain drugs, if the side effects become a problem. When one treatment is almost complete, the doctor will gradually decrease the dosage.Research has also shown that behavioural therapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy can be effective for treating several of the anxiety disorders. Behavioural therapy focuses on changing specific actions and uses several techniques to decrease or stop an unwanted behaviour. For example, one technique trains patients in diaphragmatic breathing, a special breathing exercise involving slow, deep breaths to reduce anxiety. It is necessary because people who are anxious often hyperventilate, taking rapid shallow breaths that can trigger rapid heartbeat, lightheadedness, and other symptoms. Another technique i.e. exposure therapy, gradually exposes patients to what frightens them and helps them cope with their fears.Cognitive-behavioural therapy teaches patients to react differently to the situations and bodily sensations that trigger panic attacks and other anxiety symptoms. However, patients also learn to understand how their thinking patterns contribute to their symptoms and how to change their thoughts so that symptoms are less likely to occur. This awareness of thinking patterns is combined with exposure and other behavioural techniques to help people confront their feared situations. For example, someone who becomes lightheaded during panic attack and fears he is going to die can be helped with the following approach used in cognitive-behavioural therapy. The therapist asks him to spin in a circle until he becomes dizzy. When he becomes alarmed and starts thinking, I m going to die, he learns to replace that thought with a more appropriate one, such as It s just a little dizziness—-I can handle it. 2. Somatoform disordersSomatoform disorders involve bodily symptoms that cannot be explained by known medical conditions. They are disorders in which physical symptoms are present that are due to psychological rather than physical causes. The examples of Somatoform disorders are Hypochondriasis, Pain disorder and Conversion disorder.Treatment for Somatoform disorders:The psychiatric assessment and treatment of somatoform disorders are intended to prevent additional medical intervention, develop a hypothesis for the appearance of somatoform symptoms, provide a means of physical recovery for the patient usually in conjunction with the physician, and begin a psychosocial intervention that will target appropriate concerns. At the time of psychiatric referral, families often see physicians in a negative light for failing to diagnose and treat the medical problem in their child. Occasionally, these families have long histories of difficult experiences with physicians and the medical profession, sometimes going back for generations. Treatment may suggest relationships between these preconceived notions of medicine and the development of the child’s somatic complaints. The clinician should be sensitive to these issues and not present the formulation as either purely organic or functional. In this process, the family is always free to pursue additional medical assessments as needed. The important caveat in this process is adequate communication between the designated primary medical care provider and the mental health professional. According to Leslie (1988) 85% of a pediatric sample with conversion disorder responded to either a combined pediatric-psychiatric or a purely psychiatric treatment plan.Treatment options that focus on the symptoms of somatoform disorder include individual psychotherapy, particularly as applied to self-management skills and relaxation training. Behavioral interventions, including positive and negative reinforcement, have been successful, as have biofeedback and hypnosis. Cognitive therapies have been effective in breaking the automatic cycle that maintains the symptoms one that includes repeated self-observation, false belief and continued fear. When patients are disease-phobic because they are a