Patho

• - mental health disorders
• - abnormal patterns of mood, behaviour or thought leading to distress, disability, or risk of harm (to self or others)
• - approx 25% of all people will suffer a psychiatric disorder at some point in their life

• - anxiety disorders (lifetime prevalence ~20-25%)- generalised anxiety, phobias, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder
• - mood disorders- depression (LP~5-10%)
• - bipolar disorder (LP~ 1-4%)
• - schizophrenia (LP1%)

• - integrated set of changes in physiological and behavioural function and feeling, that offers survival advantage to the organism
• Stimulus which results in-feelings, behaviour, autonomic function, endocrine function, inflammatory status

• - negative
• - positive

• - anxiety
• - fear
• - terror
• - frustration
• - anger
• - rage
• - sadness
• - grief

• - relief
• - pleasure
• - elation
• - joy
• - ecstasy

• - hypothalamus- stimulation of this can trigger complex response patterns
• - limbic system (prefrontal cortex and amygdala)
• - diffuse neuromodulatroy systems

higher centres in the brain such as the cortex

• gage-where that bar goes through that guys head
• it showed:
• - poorly controlled, emotional behaviour- quick to display angry, aggressive responses
• - consistent with more recent studies of pts with prefrontal cortex damage

• - part of a network of structures referred to as the limbic system
• key components include:
• - prefrpntal lobe
• - rostral temporal lobe
• - hippocampus
• - hypothalamus
• - amygdala

- help people interpret emoitions

stimulus- thalamus- angdala (ingerited and learnt emotional memories, critical to repsoning to rapid threats)- hypothalamus (action programes)- integrated behavioural, autonomic and endocrine response

• - modulates the activity of the amygdala center
• 

• abnormalitites in the activity of brain structures in the control of emotions
• cortex, amygdala and thalamic activity is abnormal in depressed pts

• - normally preceded by unresolved stress (vulnerability- stress hypothesis of psychiatric disorders)
• - abnormal sleep patterns
• - abnormal diurnal heart rate variability cycles
• - abnormal plateet reactivity
• - abnormal immune function

• - locus coeruleus in the pons
• - several different types of antidepressants are assumed to treat depression by altering the activity of this system

• - brainstem raphe nuclei
• - most commonly used antidepressants (the SSRIs) are assumed to treat depression by altering the activity of this system

• - origin- substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area
• - currently the focus of great interest with regard to depression and addiction

• - onset typically between 15-25
• - not a single illness. A cluster of illnesses characterised by disturbances in-thoughts, perceptions, emotions, behaviours
• - schizophrenics suffer psychotic episods, where positive symptoms are apparent- confused thinking (everyday thoughts dont join up properly), delusions- (false beliefs, not held by others of the same cultural background), hallucinations- (hear, see, fell, smell or taste something that is not actually there)
• - at other times negative symptoms will predominate- blunted emotional responsiveness, poverty of speech, apathy, social withdrawal

• - pivotal structures are the prefrontal cortex
• - midbrain dopamine neurons that project into the prefrontal cortex

- modulated dopaminergic input to itself, and limbic system