Chap 1: Abnormal behavior Flashcards
What are the five elements that define abnormal behavior?
What factors should be considered when addressing abnormal behavior?
- Inconsistent with societal norms
- Inconsistent with cultural norms
- Emotional distress
- Inconsistent with developmental norms
- Interferes with daily functioning
Personal characteristics: sex, race, culture, ethnicity
Age: chronological age, development maturity, biological changes (hormones)
Socioeconomic status: family income, education level, downward drift (people with disorders become further disadvantaged due to their symptoms)
Who is Hippocrates? What did he contribute to early biological explanations?
Hint: 3 theories; somi, humor, class
Father of modern medicine (460-377 BCE)
First to identify psychological symptoms: hallucinations, melancholia, delusions, hysteria (only women, wandering uterus)
- Somitogenesis: belief that mental disorders are caused by abnormal functioning in the physical body
- Humoral physiology: behaviour dependent on a delicate balance among four humour
- Mental classifications: Mania: energetic, frantic state
Melancholia: depression
Phrenitis (brain fever): delusions
What significant change in treatment occurred during the renaissance (14th-17th c.)? Famous establishment?
Change in treatment approach to asylums (formally leprosy clinics): generally over-capacity and under-staffed
Famous “madhouse” St. Mary of Bethlehem (1243, London): “Bedlam” = state of craziness or confusion
Who is Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926)? What did he contribute to the beginning of modern thought?
Created a classification system of mental illnesses
Diagnostics influenced by: symptom differentiation, etiology (underlying cause), and prognosis (progression/general outcomes)
Two groups of mental diseases
- Dementia praecox (schizophrenia)
- Mani-depressive psychosis (bi-polar)
Syndrome: clustering of symptoms presumed to have an underlying physical cause
What is a paradigm? What is the major drawback?
Paradigm: a set of basic assumptions, a general perspective that defines how to:
- Conceptualize and study a subject
- Gather and interpret relevant data
- Think about a particular subject
It is the conceptual framework or approach within which a scientist works
Drawbacks: confirmation bias/only looking for other possibilities
What is the biological paradigm? What are the 5 subsets of this paradigm?
Hint: BBBMN
Mental disorders are caused by defective biological processes (medical model/disease model)
Areas of research in this paradigm:
1. Brain structure (morphology)
2. Brain function
- observing changes or differences in brain structure (CT scans, MRI + biological scarring)
- observing functioning in areas of the brain (PET scans, fMRI)
3. Behavior genetics
- The study of individual differences in behavior attributable to differences in the genetic makeup
4. Molecular genetics
- Aims to identify particular gene(s) involved in disorders
Ex: OCD = gaba receptor
5. Neuroscience
- Aims to better understand the structure and function of the nervous system and the impact it has on behavior
What are the biological approaches to treatment? what is the main issue with this?
Hint: PED
Assumes that prevention or treatment of mental disorders should be possible by altering bodily (brain functioning)
- Psychoactive drugs or pharmaceuticals
- Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
- Deep brain stimulation
Main issue: not based on underlying etiology
What are some contemporary models of psychoanalysis?
Ego psychology (positive psychology): conscious motivations, healthy function, and the personality as a whole
Objects relation theory: peoples relationship with important objects, using relationship with therapist to form better connections in real life
What are the three types of learning according to the behavior model + the people/theories associated? What are the forms of treatment?
Hint:
Learning: MOC
Treatment: OSAC
Classical conditioning: - Ivan Pavlov’s dogs: UCS, UCR, CS, CR, extinction
- Joseph Wolfe (1915-1997): used classical conditioning to demonstrate that anxiety could be learned and fear could be unlearned
- Systematic desensitization: teaching a patient how to relax, and then pairing that relaxation with the anxiety-provoking stimulus
Operant conditioning: - - B.F skinner (1904-1990): focus on the association between responses and their consequences or contingencies
- Law of effect
- Punishment and reinforcement
Modelling or vicarious learning:
- Albert Bandura (1925-present)
- Modelling: learning by watching and imitating others (BoBo the doll)
Behavioral approaches to treatment: 1. Counterconditioning and exposure 2. Systematic desensitization 3. Aversive conditioning 4. Operant conditioning Modelling
What is the cognitive model for abnormal behavior? What are cognitive distortions, cognitive triad for depression?
What treatments are available from this model?
Abnormal behavior is the result of distorted cognitive (mental) processes
Founded by Aaron Beck (1921)
Cognitive distortions: ex; only seeing the worst days, narrow perspective
Cognitive triad for depression: negative view of self, the world and the future
Treatment:
- Beck’s (1976) cognitive therapy
- Albert Ellis’s rational-emotive behavior therapy - eliminate limiting beliefs, positive self-talk
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) - challenge and change cognitive distortions and behaviors
What is the humanistic model? What are the treatments?
Founder Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
- Abnormal behavior originates when one’s self-image and actual self are incongruent
- Phenomenology: philosophy of experience
Treatment
- Client-centered therapy
- genuineness
- empathic understanding
- unconditional positive regard
What are the two primary integrative paradigms?
Diathesis-stress paradigm: diathesis is biological and/or psych vulnerability, stress is environmental factors, both combine to create distress/dysfunction and resulting psychological disorder
Biopsychosocial paradigm: emphasize the interplay among the biological, psychological and social/environmental perspectives
