Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is Abnormal Psychology?
- “abnormal psychology is the branch of the science psychology that addresses the description, causes and treatment of abnormal behavior patterns”
- branch of psychology that deal with the description, causes and treatment of abnormal behavior patterns
What is the medical model
biological perspective in which abnormal behavior is viewed as symptomatic of underlying illness
mental illness is ultimately a disease of the brain, and we should be researching it the same way as other diseases. Helped move away from thinking that mental illness derived from the supernatural
what are Hallucinations
perceptions that occur in the absence of an external stimulus and that are confused with reality
How do we define abnormal behavior?
- Is the behavior unusual? 2. Does the behavior violate social norms? 3. Does the behavior involve a faulty interpretation of reality? 4. Does the behavior cause personal distress? 5. Is the behavior maladaptive or self-defeating? 6. Is the behavior dangerous (to the person of others)?
What Factors Affect our Perception of What is Abnormal?
Culture?
- behavior consider normal in one culture may deemed abnormal in another. For example, anxiety and depression
- we need to consider how people in different cultures experience states of emotional distress, including depressions and anxiety, rather than imposing our perspectives on them
- even the way mental illness manifests are influenced by culture
What Factors Affect our Perception of What is Abnormal?
Context?
- Is this abnormal? (Shirt off at a hockey game)
- Does it deviate from social norms?
- that depends on where and when the behaviors occur
How Common are Psychological Disorders?
- Anxiety disorders: affects almost 30% of adults in their lifetime
- Mood disorders: affects over 20% of adults in their lifetime
- Substance abuse disorders affects almost 15% of adults across their lifetimes
- process addictions: gambling, excessive video games,
- Any disorder: affects over 46% of adults in their lifetime
What are the main risk factors for developing a psychological disorder?
- age
- education
- childhood trauma
- current stress
- life events
- lack of social support
- gender
- physical health
- genetic predisposition
-protective factor?
something that mitigates the risk or seriousness of the psychological risk factor
psychological disorder (mental disorder):
- involve abnormal behavior patterns associated with disturbances in mental health or psychological functioning
What are the risk factors for developing a psychological disorder?
- exposure to multiple risk factors can have an exponential effect that dramatically increases the likelihood of adverse outcomes
- exposure to just 2 factors can engender a fourfold increase in adverse outcomes
- exposure to 4 or more risk factors can increase adverse outcomes tenfold
How have we historically viewed abnormal behavior?
-medieval times (exorcism)
- Witchcraft
- Malleus Maleficarum – the hammer of witches, witch hunters
- not universally held
-The Demonological Model
-the model that explains abnormal behavior in terms of supernatural forces
Trephining ?
harsh prehistoric practice of cutting a hole in a person’s skull, possibly as an ancient form of surgery for brain trauma, or possibly as a means of releasing the demons prehistoric people may have believed caused abnormal behavior in the inflicted individual
-Hippocrates and ‘ill humors’
the humors?
- Hot and dry – yellow file; fire
- wet and cold – Phlegm; water
- hot and wet – blood; air
- Dry and cold – Black; bile earth
-phlegmatic
slow and stolid (phlegm)
- melancholia:
: state of severe depression (black bile)
sanguine:
cheerful (blood)
-choleric
having or showing a bad temper (yellow bile)
-Asylums in Europe and the New world (or madhouses)
Bedlam, London UK ?
first described as a hospital, eventually had some permanent patients, known for brutal treatment of patients
-Hotel Dieu (Quebec, 1639)
-referring to canals and disorganization and mistreatment, people were treated as animals and 2nd class citizens
- The Reform Movement: Moral Therapy
- Philippe Pinel (France), William Turke (England) and Dorthea Dix (Canada and the USA)
- people should start being treated humanely although mist people saw people with a mental illness as a threat to society at the time, not as sick people who needed care
- found that most people who were “chained” became calm and docile when treated with kindness and fairly
-moral therapy:
: a 19th century treatment philosophy empathizing that hospitalized mental patients should be treated with care and understating in a pleasant environment, not shackled in chains
-Deinstitutionalization:
-practice of discharging large numbers of hospitalized mental patients to the community and reducing the need for new admissions through the development of alternative treatment approaches such as halfway houses and crisis intervention services