Understanding Mental Disorders: Personality Disorders, Anxiety, & Depression

Course overview

This course is specifically designed to provide information on personality structure, personality disorders, stress, anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder that will augment professional education and training of health professionals. The course describes how the elements of psychological functioning like perception, attention, thinking, emotions, and memory combine with genetic and epigenetic factors to produce unique personality structures and also discusses the impact of the OCEAN five-factor personality theory on the development of personality disorders. The ten DSM-5 personality disorders will be described with new research on these disorders, in particular how these disorders disrupt social relationships. The latest research on emotions and moods is presented with application to the development of stress, anxiety, and depression. The three pathways and three manifestations of the stress response are described in detail along with the concept of chronic stress being the major platform for the development of most anxiety disorders. The major anxiety disorders are presented with both their differing and similar emotional and mood elements described in detail. The distinctive mood and dissociative elements of posttraumatic stress disorder that have resulted in separate grouping as a DSM-5 stressor- and trauma-related disorder with be described along with current research findings. The seminar will also present new research and developing concepts on the nature, extent, and effects of major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The extensive clinical information on the nature, extent, diagnosis, and current developments in treatment of these major brain disorders is not typically covered in detailed fashion in healthcare curriculum and represents advance postdoctoral knowledge.