About a year ago Elijah started having odd beliefs and thoug…

About a year ago Elijah started having odd beliefs and thoughts about the world around him. He began telling his family that the KGB was following him to try to steal his plans to protect the US from biological weapons. Elijah tells his family that he frequently hears the FBI communicating to him telling him where to go and how to avoid the KGB. Elijah’s only work experience after high school has been working for a local mechanic. Which diagnosis is most likely for Elijah?

Roger states that he has been miserable for the past three w…

Roger states that he has been miserable for the past three weeks. He says he has been in an irritable mood most of the time and keeps “biting peoples’ heads off over nothing.” He is also having trouble sleeping at night (he says he wakes up after just a few hours and can’t seem to fall back asleep). Roger has not been able to concentrate at work. He says for the past three weeks he has had a recurring nightmare that the house is on fire and he wakes up in a cold sweat. Three weeks ago, his house did catch on fire and Roger escaped but was burned on his legs and is undergoing treatment for smoke inhalation. Roger says he hasn’t felt happy or even calm for three weeks, but is always watching for something bad to happen. He has avoided going to his mother’s house for the past two weeks even though he usually went over there daily. His mom always has a fire going in the fireplace in winter, and Roger says he can’t stand to be around that right now. The times he has been unable to avoid her home, he said he felt nauseous as soon as he saw the fire, and that he began sweating. Unfortunately, everything he has done to avoid thinking about the fire does not seem to help – he can’t seem to help thinking about it repeatedly every day and he feels hopeless and sad as a result. Which diagnosis is most likely for Roger?

For the past two years, Emma finds herself constantly worrie…

For the past two years, Emma finds herself constantly worried about sin and that she is an evil person. She says each day she finds herself worrying that she may be a sinner bound for hell. She tries to ignore the thoughts, but says she the worries are unavoidable and that she will repeatedly have the thought while trying to do other things. The only thing that helps with the worries about her evil nature are to read her Bible and pray. So when she feels overwhelmed in feelings she is overly sinful she will read 39 verses and then pray for at least five minutes for forgiveness. Often, Emma feels she may have miscounted the verses so she recounts the number of verses and starts the process over. When she feels satisfied that she has read exactly 39 verses and prayed for forgiveness, Emma feels better for a short time, but then quickly thinks of some other “wrong” she committed at some point in her past, and begins worrying that perhaps she was not forgiven sufficiently for that wrong, and restarts the ritual to seek forgiveness again. Which diagnosis is most likely for Emma?

Stephanie is typically a pleasant teenager. Most of the time…

Stephanie is typically a pleasant teenager. Most of the time even unpleasant days are handled by her with a good attitude. For example, when her dog died last week she was sad, but talked about how that happens in life. However, sometimes she gets exceptionally angry at very little things. Yesterday, Stephanie’s dad asked her to help with dishes while she was texting some friends. She immediately began a profanity laced tirade at him saying that he doesn’t want her to fit in with anyone and that he needs to do some work himself instead of treating her like a slave. These types of outbursts seem to occur at least two or three times a week and this has been going on for about a year. Which diagnosis is most likely for Stephanie?

Richard has had episodes of sheer terror over the past 8 mon…

Richard has had episodes of sheer terror over the past 8 months when walking into a church building. He breaks into a cold sweat and often feels like he is having a heart attack. During these attacks he imagines that he is completely losing control of himself. He has stopped going to church because he fears having another one of these attacks, but they have also happened without warning at other times. Which of the following diagnoses is most likely?

Katie reports that over the past six months she has been bin…

Katie reports that over the past six months she has been binge eating several times a week and self-inducing vomiting afterwards to control her weight. She states she has lost weight going from a 20 on the BMI scale to a current 14. Katie states that she is ugly because she is fat and needs to lose more weight. Which of the following diagnoses is most likely?

Ava deals with a lot of anxiety and stress. For the past thr…

Ava deals with a lot of anxiety and stress. For the past three months she has developed a troubling habit of pulling on her hair to deal with her stress and feels a decrease in tension after pulling out a few hairs. She then feels an urge to eat the hair and has been eating the hair she pulls out for about six weeks. For which of the following diagnoses does Ava meet the criteria?

In several classes of diagnoses, video and class discussion…

In several classes of diagnoses, video and class discussion presented the idea of the disorders being arranged in a hierarchy. What does this mean? Give an example of some of the disorders that are in a hierarchy. How does this affect the diagnostic process? (6-8 sentences expected)