chapter 1 case study answers alicia

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18.1 Case Study: Making Babies

Created by CK-12 Foundation/Adapted by Christine Miller

Case Study: Trying to Conceive

Alicia, 28, and Victor, 30, have been married for three years. A year ago, they decided they wanted to have a baby, and they stopped using birth control. At first, they did not pay attention to the timing of their sexual activity in relation to Alicia’s menstrual cycle, but after six months passed without Alicia becoming pregnant, they decided to try to maximize their efforts.

They knew that in order for a woman to become pregnant, the man’s sperm must encounter the woman’s egg, which is typically released once a month through a process called ovulation. They also had heard that for the average woman, ovulation occurs around day 14 of the menstrual cycle. To maximize their chances of conception, they tried to have sexual intercourse on day 14 of Alicia’s menstrual cycle each month.

After several months of trying this method, Alicia is still not pregnant. She is concerned that she may not be ovulating on a regular basis, because her menstrual cycles are irregular and often longer than the average 28 days. Victor is also concerned about his own fertility. He had some injuries to his testicles (testes) when he was younger, and wonders if that may have caused a problem with his sperm.

Alicia calls her doctor for advice. Dr. Bashir recommends that she try taking her temperature each morning before she gets out of bed. This temperature is called basal body temperature (BBT), and recording BBT throughout a woman’s menstrual cycle can sometimes help identify if and when she is ovulating. Additionally, Dr. Bashir recommends she try using a home ovulation predictor kit, which predicts ovulation by measuring the level of luteinizing hormone (LH) in urine. In the meantime, Dr. Bashir sets up an appointment for Victor to give a semen sample, so that his sperm may be examined with a microscope.

As you read this chapter, you will learn about the male and female reproductive systems, how sperm and eggs are produced, and how they meet each other to ultimately produce a baby. You will learn how these complex processes are regulated, and how they can be susceptible to problems along the way. Problems in either the male or female reproductive systems can result in infertility, or difficulty in achieving a successful pregnancy. As you read the chapter, you will understand exactly how BBT and LH relate to ovulation, why Dr. Bashir recommended that Alicia monitor these variables, and the types of problems she will look for in Victor’s semen. At the end of the chapter, you will find out the results of Alicia and Victor’s fertility assessments, steps they can take to increase their chances of conception, and whether they are ultimately able to get pregnant.

Chapter Overview: Reproductive System

In this chapter you will learn about the male and female reproductive systems. Specifically, you will learn about:

• The functions of the reproductive system, which includes the production and fertilization of gametes (eggs and sperm), the production of sex hormones by the gonads (testes and ovaries), and, in females, the carrying of a fetus.
• How the male and female reproductive systems differentiate in the embryo and fetus, and how they mature during puberty.
• The structures of the male reproductive system, including the testes, epididymis, vas deferens , ejaculatory ducts, seminal vesicles, prostate gland, bulbourethral glands, and the penis.
• How sperm are produced, how they mature, how they are stored, and how they are deposited into the female.
• The fluids in semen that protect and nourish sperm, and where those fluids are produced.
• Disorders of the male reproductive system, including erectile dysfunction, epididymitis, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer — some of which predominantly affect younger men.
• The structures of the female reproductive system, including the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, cervix, vagina, and external structures of the vulva.
• How eggs are produced in the female fetus, and how they then mature after puberty through the process of ovulation.
• The menstrual cycle, its purpose, and the hormones that control it.
• How fertilization and implantation occur, the stages of pregnancy and childbirth, and how the mother’s body produces milk to feed the baby.
• Disorders of the female reproductive system, including cervical cancer, endometriosis, and vaginitis (which includes yeast infections).
• Some causes and treatments of male and female infertility.
• Forms of contraception (birth control), including barrier methods (such as condoms), hormonal methods (such as the birth control pill), behavioural methods, intrauterine devices, and sterilization.

As you read the chapter, think about the following questions:

• Why might sexual intercourse on day 14 of Alicia’s menstrual cycle not necessarily be optimal timing to achieve a pregnancy?
• Why is Alicia concerned about her irregular and long menstrual cycles? How could tracking her BBT and LH level help identify if she is ovulating and when?
• Why do you think Victor is concerned about past injuries to his testes? How might analysis of his semen help assess whether he has a fertility issue and, if so, the type of issue?

Attributions

Figure 18.1.1

Couple by Md saad andalib on Flickr is used under a CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) license.

Figure 18.1.2

Basal_Body_Temperature by BruceBlaus on Wikimedia Commons is used under a   CC BY SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) license.

Human Biology Copyright © 2020 by Christine Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter 13 PUTTING IT… together

Disorders of Personalit y— Rediscovered and Reconsidered

During the first half of the twentieth century, clinicians believed deeply in the unique, enduring patterns we call personality, and they tried to define important personality traits. They then discovered how readily people can be shaped by the situations in which they find themselves, and a backlash developed. The concept of personality seemed to lose legitimacy, and for a while it became almost an obscene word in some circles. The clinical category of personality disorders went through a similar rejection. When psychodynamic and humanistic theorists dominated the clinical field, neurotic character disorders —a set of diagnoses similar to today’s personality disorder s— were considered useful clinical categories, but their popularity declined as other models grew in influence.

CLINICAL CHOICES

Now that you’ve read about personality disorders, try the interactive case study for this chapter. See if you are able to identify Alicia’s symptoms and suggest a diagnosis based on her symptoms. What kind of treatment would be most effective for Alicia? Go to LaunchPad to access Clinical Choices.

During the past 25 years, serious interest in personality and personality disorders has rebounded. In case after case, clinicians have concluded that rigid personality traits do seem to pose special problems, and they have developed new tests and interview guides to assess these disorders, setting in motion a wave of systematic research. So far, only the antisocial and borderline personality disorders have received much study. However, with DS M- 5 now considering a ne w— dimensiona l— classification approach for possible use in the future, additional research is likely to follow. This may allow clinicians to better answer some pressing questions: How common are the various personality disorders? How useful are personality disorder categories? How effective is a dimensional approach to diagnosing these disorders? And which treatments are most effective?

One of the most important questions is, “Why do people develop troubled patterns of personality?” As you have read, psychological, as opposed to biological and sociocultural, theories have offered the most suggestions so far, but these explanations are not very precise and they do not have strong research support. Given the current enthusiasm for biological explanations, genetic and biological factors are beginning to receive considerable study, a shift in the waters that should soon enable researchers to determine possible interactions between biological and psychological causes. And one would hope that sociocultural factors will be studied as well. As you have seen, sociocultural theorists have only occasionally offered explanations for personality disorders, and multicultural factors have received little research. However, sociocultural factors may well play an important role in these disorders and certainly should be examined more carefully.

DS M- 5’s proposal of a dimensional classification approach eventually may lead to major changes in the field’s understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of personality disorders. Now that clinicians have rediscovered personality disorders, they must determine the most appropriate ways to think about, explain, and treat them.