Alternatives To The Medical Model Flashcards
Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning theory explanation for behaviours. (Behaviourist)
Classical conditioning: Little Albert study by Watson and Rayner in 1920. At first, child shows no signs of fear towards rat. Experimenters pair a white rat with a loud noise and after a few days of repeated pairings, this makes little Albert associate the white rat with the noise so he develops a phobia (including white things like rabbits and Santa’s beard).
Operant conditioning:
Positive reinforcement: e.g. showing signs of anxiety when near a dog is rewarded by comfort from parents. Child continues to show anxiety around dogs to gain the reward of comfort and attention.
Negative reinforcement: e.g. approaching a lift and feeling anxiety. Stepping away from the lift and taking the stairs removes the negative stimulus so person continues to do this.
Social learning theory: children watching role models e.g. parents show anxiety when faced with certain things e.g. screaming when seeing a spider will cause them to display the same behaviour particularly if the role model is the same sex.
Background: Aaron Beck and the negative cognitive triad. (Cognitive)
Beck suggested the cognitive explanation for mental disorders or any dysfunctional behaviour is due to the individual suffering from irrational, faulty or unhelpful thought patterns.
Cognitive triad: dysfunctional beliefs in people with depression
-Everything I do results in failure
-I am worthless or flawed
-The future is hopeless
These are acquired in childhood by experiences like losing a loved one which created a negative bias that is later triggered by another event.
Albert Ellis and faulty cognitions (cognitive)
He believed irrational thoughts could cause and sustain mental disorders. Faulty conditions summarised within 3 points:
Awfulizing/ catastrophizing ‘it is awful if I get turned down for a date’
Can’t-stand-it’s ‘I can’t stand not doing well in an exam’
Musterbating ‘people must like me or I’m worthless’
Background: conflicts between the id, ego and superego and how this leads to depression (psychodynamic explanation).
- The id demands gratification and the superego attempts to put a moral restraint on the id.
- Giving in to the id will make us feel guilty and if we don’t the superego will be too strong causing us to be overwhelmed with guilt, this caused problems like damaged relationships , acute depression and suicide to silence the superego.
- Freud believed the ego prevents us harming ourselves so instead we harm others.
- Ego defence mechanisms to prevent conflicts damaging ourselves but overuse can lead to disturbed behaviour.
Key research: Szasz
Background: he published an essay called ‘the myth of mental illness’ in which he challenged the 1950s concept that mental illness was a medical condition and should be treated as such.
Conclusion: by using a medical approach to mental illness we are harming patients we are trying to help e.g. if the patient is trying to harm themselves, we shouldn’t Medicate as this has led to pseudoscience of ‘suicidology’.
Some comparison points made by Szasz:
1960:
Health care for mental patients is mental hospitals or private non-medical practitioners.
Mental patients treated like prisoners. Unable to leave and psychiatrists acting as judge and jury.
Mental illness is not a disease like a physical disease.
Mental illness doesn’t exist so it’s foolish to look for causes and cures.
2010:
False belief that all mental illnesses can be diagnosed accurately and treated.
No evidence of mental illness being caused by the brain. Physical brain abnormalities are misdiagnosed mental illnesses.
People judge the bad behaviour of others as mental illnesses so the list of disorders will grow.
If people do something evil it’s due to mental illness.
People have reasons for behaviours that need to be understood not treated medically.
Application: systematic desensitisation- behaviourist
Replacing the conditioned fear with one of relaxation.
- First, the individual and therapist construct a hierarchy and orders situations with which the fear is associated from least to most fearful.
- Then they are trained in deep muscle relaxation techniques where they contract and relax their muscles, gain control of breathing and use visualisation techniques.
- They are exposed to the least fearful thing on their hierarchy and relax themselves with the technique. Once relaxation is reached, they’re exposed to the next item and relax themselves again until they all the items in the hierarchy have been removed and the person is desensitised.
Strength: more ethical than other methods (e.g.flooding).
Weakness: can take more time therefore more expensive.
Application: flooding- behaviourist
Stimulus is presented directly to the person e.g. a person with a fear of spiders is given a tarantula to hold. The immediate fear response adrenaline isn’t sustainable for long and soon the person will calm down. They will associate the object with the feeling of calm.
Strength: quick method
Weakness: unethical and can cause trauma.
Application: aversion therapy- behaviourist
Used to produce an unpleasant association with the stimulus e.g. people with alcohol addictions are given a drug that induces nausea whenever they drink alcohol. Repeated sickness will result in the learned response of aversion to alcohol.
Application: rational emotive therapy by Ellis- Cognitive
A- activating event (the phobic stimulus)
B- the persons beliefs about the stimulus
C- the consequences of these beliefs ( what they do to avoid the stimulus)
D- disputing these beliefs ( questioning irrational beliefs)
E- effects (restructured thoughts helping person to cope)
Helpful for things like social anxiety disorder.
