Defining Abnormalities and Disorders - AP Psychology

Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by sudden sleep attacks, as well as overwhelming drowsiness.

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing or infrequent breathing during sleep. Night terrors are episodes of screaming, intense fear, and flailing while still asleep. Often compared to nightmares, night terrors are much more intense. Insomnia is a sleep disorder characterized by difficulty falling and/or staying asleep.

A somatoform disorder is a condition in which a patient experiences physical symptoms that cannot be explained by a medical or neurological diagnosis. Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) become fixated upon their actual or imagined physical flaws. Individuals with pain disorders experience physical pain that is triggered by psychological distress. These physical manifestations of psychological symptoms constitute somatoform disorders.

Depression is a mood disorder. All of the other choices represent anxiety disorders.

Hypochondriasis is a disorder in which people perceive the presence of an illness when there is none. This is a type of somatoform disorder.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is unrelated to autism spectrum disorder. GAD is an anxiety disorder characterized by chronic anxiety with no known triggers.

While borderline personality disorder (BPD) does not have the highest suicide rate of any psychological disorder, it has the highest of the personality class. Some reports estimate that up to 10% of diagnosed patients carry through with suicide. The exact number depends on the study, but BPD holds the highest rate under any account.

While autism presents as a relative indifference to emotional and social context, those that display autistic tendencies can still benefit from exposure to social normality and emotional closeness. Many people with autism may prefer and enjoy their own company, it is not a universal characteristic of those diagnosed with autism. In fact, they may need more social or emotional support than their peers in order to learn how to interact with people and enjoy a more connected life in society.

A general characteristic of autism is that those diagnosed are much less likely to seek out emotional or social support, as compared to those without the disorder.

Derived from the opium poppy, opiates, including heroin and morphine, are used to relieve pain and elevate moods. While heroin is strictly an illegal, recreational drug, morphine is often used in medical treatment for patients in intense physical distress.

While people suffering from agnosia are still capable of hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling and tasting new stimuli, their brains are unable to process that information into a recognizable experience.

Refusing to eat is more common in Anorexia Nervosa cases than in Bulimia Nervosa cases. A person suffering from Bulimia Nervosa typically binge eats—they over-eat and consume a large amount of calories in a short amount of time. Following this eating, they purge—they rid themselves of what they have eaten by using laxatives, diuretics, or making themselves vomit.

Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a long-standing disregard for the rights and feelings of others. Although this disorder has roots in childhood and adolescence, only adults over the age of eighteen can be given an official diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. The other answer choices can all be diagnosed in children as young as three years old.

Substance dependence, or drug addiction, refers to continuing use of a drug despite severe costs. It results from a combination of biological and environmental factors. Impulsivity, for example, is rooted in a person's genetic makeup. Cultural norms, familial values, and pure circumstance also play key roles. Self-medication refers to a person's tendency to use alcohol or other substances to cope with physical pain or mental illness.

A somatoform disorder can be defined as "a distressing disorder in which there is physical pain that can't be traced to a physical cause." People with a somatoform disorder are typically very distressed about their physical health and tend to assume and worry that small symptoms of illness, such as a sore throat, are a sign of a terrible illness, like throat cancer. Somatoform disorders do not have to do with the skin specifically, and people with somatoform disorders are truly convinced of their physical ailments. Furthermore, somatoform disorders can be disabling but somatoform disorders account for a very small percentage of disabilities and are not the medical term for having a disability.

DID occurs when, usually as a result of early childhood trauma and abuse, someone has two or more distinct personalities rather than one integrated one. The media has been fascinated with DID, leading to well-known movies such as Sybil. However, tests conducted on patients with DID have been inconclusive and it is strange that nearly all of the cases of reported DID have been in the US. These factors have led many people to question the true existence of the disorder, unlike the well-documented and well-researched disorders of OCD, PTSD, major depressive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Camille's symptoms are indicative of sleep apnea, which is characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep that cause repeated momentary awakenings throughout the night. In this way, sleep apnea can disrupt slow-wave, deep sleep.

"Antisocial personality disorder" (ASPD) is characterized by a disregard for the safety and feelings of others, impulsivity, deceitfulness, and law breaking. ASPD is three times more common in men than in women, while all of the other answer choices are more commonly seen in women.

As stated in the DSM-5, the correct answer is "gender dysphoria involves feeling that your emotional and psychological identity as a certain gender is different than your biological sex." All of the other answer choices are false regarding gender dysphoria.

Somatoform disorders involve physical symptoms that have no known physiological cause, which may or may not be due to a psychological problem. Conversion disorder is a somatoform disorder that includes the presence of neurological symptoms without an identified cause. Schizoaffective disorder involves symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder, such as depression or Bipolar disorder. Generalized anxiety disorder is an anxiety disorder that involves anxiety and worry over a number of things in one's life. Dissociative identity disorder falls under the category of dissociative disorders and includes the presence of multiple personalities. Bipolar disorder involves at least one episode of mania (i.e. high energy, grandiosity, impulsivity), and may or may not include periods of depression.

"Chronic fatigue syndrome" is not an eating disorder; however, this syndrome is more commonly seen in individuals with poor nutritional habits (e.g. those with eating disorders). All of the other answer choices are categorized in the DSM-V as eating disorders.