Chapter 4 (diagnosis, assessment, and study of mental disorders) Flashcards
Dimensional approach
-refers to defining abnormal behaivor on a continuum or spectrum
Abnormal behaivor consists of
- Emotional states
- Cognitive styles
- Physical behaivor
Categorical approach
One either has or doesn’t have a mental disorder
Diagnosis
Defined by rules how many and what features of a mental disorder must be present
General features of mental disorder according to DSM
- A group of emotional, cognitive, or behaivoral symptoms called a syndrom that occur within a person
- these symptoms are usually associated with emotional distress or disability(impairment) in life activities
- the syndrom is not simply expected or culturally approved response to a specific event, such as grief and sadness followed by death of a loved one
- The symptoms are considered to reflect dysfunction in psychological, biological, or developmental processes
Classification
Refers to arranging mental disorders into broad catagories or classes based on similar features
Clinical assessment
Involves evaluating a person’s strengths and weaknesses and understanding the problem at hand to develop a treatment
Reliability
The consistency of scores or responses
Test-retest reliability
The extent to which a person provides similar answers to the same questions across time
Interrater reliability
Agreement between 2+ rafters or judges about the level of a trait or presence/absence or a feature or diagnosis
Internal consistency reliability
Relationship among test items that measure the same variable
Validity
The extent to which an assessment tequnique measures what it is suppose to measure
Content validity
How well test or interview items adequately measure various aspects of a variable, construct or diagnosis
Predictive validity
How well test scores or diagnoses predict and correlate with the behaivor or test scores that are observed or obtained at some future point
Concurrent validity
How well test scores or diagnoses correlate with a related but independent set of test scores or behaivor
Construct validity
How well test scores or diagnoses correlate with other measures or behaivors in a logical and theoretically consistent way
Standardization
Administering or conducting assent measures int he same way for everyone
Unstructured interviews
Allow interviewer to ask questions that come to mind in any order
Structured interview
Require and interviewer to standardize questions in a specified sequence
Ex. SCID
Intelligence tests
Asses cognitive functioning and provide estimates for an individual’s intellectual ability
Ex. Weschler intelligent scale
Personality assessment
Refers to instruments that measure different traits or aspects of our character
Objective personality measures
Involve administering a standard set of questions or statements to which the person responds using set options
Ex. Beck depression inventory
MMPI-2 validity scales
Used to detect people who are trying to look a certain way or who are defensive or careless when taking a test
MMPI-2 clinical scales
Can suggest certain diagnoses, and indicate various personality styles and problematic behaivors
Projective tests
Based on the assumption that people faced with an ambiguous stimulus such as an “inkblot” will project their own needs, personalityies, and conflicts
Ex. Rorschac and TAT
Behaivoral assessment
Measure overt behaivors or responses shown by a person
Organismic variables
A person’s physiological or cognitive characteristics that may help the therapist understand a problem and determine treatment
Naturalistic observation
Client is directly observed in their natural environment
Self monitoring
A person observes and records his own emotions, thoughts, and behaivors
Dysfunctional thought record
Helps identify and monitor situations, thoughts, responses, and outcomes associated with problems such as depression
Biological assessment examples
Neuroimaging
Neurochemical assesments
Psychophysiological assesments
Neuropsychological assesment
Neurochemical assesment
-biological assesment of difunction in certain NT systems
Metabolites
Products of NT’s that can be found in the blood and cerebral spinal fluid that indicates levels of NT’s in the brain
Psychophysiological assesment
Evaluating bodily changes associated with certain mental conditions
Ex.s EEG, Galvanic skin conductance, EKG
Neuropsychological assesments
Indirect, non invasive measures of brain and physical function
Ex. Bender Visual moter Gestalt test
Scientific method steps
- Generate the hypothesis
- Develope a research design
- Analyze and interpret data
Hypothesis must be
Testable and falsifiable
External validity
The extent to which the result can be generalized to the whole population
Natural experiment
Observational study in which nature itself helps assign groups
Cross sectional studies
-examing differnt groups of people at one point in time
Sequential design
Begins as a cross sectional study but the groups are examined over a shorter time frame
