Blog Post #12 - Psychological Disorders

According to the book, on page 594, a psychological disorder is an ongoing pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are deviant, distressful, and/or dysfunctional behavior patterns. For many people, it can be very had to decide whether or not someone has a psychological disorder. Many people may think someone does because of the way they act or look at things. People are raised different and have different mannerisms and beliefs, therefore they may look at someone who is different from them and think they have a disorder. At various moments, everyone of us feel, think, or act differently. People may get excited, depressed, suspcious, or withdrawn. However, this does not mean we have a psychological disorder.

I have never been around anyone with a psychological disorder or been close to someone with one. The disorder I found really intriguing was bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or a medical condition, two or more weeks of significantly depressed moods, feelings of worthlessness, and diminished interest or pleasure in most activites. Alternating between the euphoric, hyperactive, wildly optimistic state of mania to living in slow motion and being depressed signals bipolar disorder. Many bipolar people have extreme mood swings often, sleep problems, and may have thoughts of suicide. I would hate to be bipolar because one day you could be the happiest person in the world and then the next have the worse feelings of worthlessness. I would hate the mood swings and having to hurt others around me that had to deal with it and who were affected by it.

The most interesting thing I learned was schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganzied and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions. There are different subtypes of schizophrenia like paranoid, disorganization, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual. There are early warning signs such as a mother whose schizophrenia was severe and long, separation from parents, disruptive and withdrawn behavior, and emotional unpredicitability. I never knew what schizophrenia actually was and how severe it can actually get. This is one disorder I would never want to have because of the symptoms that it can cause.