Psych Outline

Outline

Questions

Describe how altered states of consciousness related to sleep, psychoactive drugs, or meditation and hypnosis affect individuals with the disorder (Depression). Sleep disorders affect the quality, duration, and onset of sleep. Sleep deprivation, frequently changing sleep schedules, stress, and environment all affect the progression of a sleep cycle. Psychological conditions like depression shorten the duration of REM.

Treatment and medication often affects sleep, typically causing a change in sleep habits.

Nightmare: A dream that causes an extreme unpleasant emotional response - usually fear, horror, or experiencing the sensations of pain, suffocation, falling, or death.

Nightmares can be related to physical causes such as a high fever, psychological trauma or stress, or sometimes no apparent reason at all. Having an occasional nightmare is common, but recurring nightmares can lead to sleep disorders and other problems.

Throughout history, society has found ways to alter consciousness through the ingestion of substances. In current professional practice, psychoactive substances have been known to create or help prolong severe mental illnesses.

{text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Psychoactive substances exert their effects by modifying biochemical or physiological processes in the brain. The message system of nerve cells, or neurons, relies on both electrical and chemical transmission. Neurons rarely touch each other; the microscopic gap between one neuron and the next, called the synapse, is bridged by chemicals called neuroregulators, or neurotransmitters. Psychoactive drugs act by altering neurotransmitter function. The drugs can be divided into six major pharmacological classes based on their desired behavioral or psychological effect: alcohol, sedative-hypnotics, narcotic analgesics, stimulant-euphoriants, hallucinogens, and psychotropic agents.

{text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Alcohol...