Child psych: development psychopathology Flashcards
What is developmental psychopathology?
- Science underpinning the psychiatry
- What are the processes that go wrong during development that result in problems with thinking and behaviour?
- How do genes, biological processes and life experiences interact with each other throughout development?
- How do adverse and fortuitous circumstances influence each other?
What are notable genetic factors relating to developmental psychopathology?
- Multiple twin and adoption studies have been carried out
- These studies have shown that disorders such as ADHD and Autism are highly genetic.
- Depression and anxiety are also substantially genetic.
What are Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) used for?
- Increasingly used to identify genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorder
- Indicate that many genes are implicated, mostly of small effect
- Many implicate micro-RNA and epigenetic modulation
- Genetic factors serving modulation of gene expression are likely to be important.
What are some of the Intra-uterine and perinatal factors?
- Maternal health – Maternal antibodies, obesity, diabetes
- Substance misuse – alcohol, marijuana
- Toxins – lead, mercury and PCB’s
- Drugs - esp psychotropics/antiepileptics (lipid soluble)
- Epigenetics – folate controlled methylation
- Endocrine environment – esp androgens
- Immune environment
- Premature birth/ Perinatal complications
- Twinning
- Impressive levels of resilience
What are the features of Fetal alcohol syndrome?
- Growth retardation
- body,
- head,
- brain (inc cerebellum)
- eyes
- Multiple neuro-developmental effects:
- Sensorimotor
- Cognitive Development
- Executive function
- Language
How is white matter connectivity relevant?
- Low connectivity associated with more neural ‘noise’ in the system, intra-individual variability and ‘cognitive instability’.
- In developing brains this is typically associated with ADHD – poor concentration, distractibility.
Give examples of environmental factors at play during childhood?
- Carer - child relationship (attachment)
- Parenting skill and parental mental disorder e.g. post-natal depression, substance misuse.
- Marital harmony, family function.
- Nutrition, poverty, deprivation.
- Abuse, neglect,
- Discipline
- Day-care and schooling
- Peer relationships,
- Life events,
- Physical disability
Please describe ‘attatchment’ and it’s relevance?
- Secure or insecure according to direct observation of behaviour during “Strange situation”.
- Much variability of mental health has been attributed to early attachment patterns “lack of bonding”.
- BUT there is little evidence for this.
How can stress effect development?
- Early life stress influences function of limbic circuit including amygdala
- Determines subsequent patterns of stress response.
- Early life stress influences mood and patterns of response to threat including withdrawal and/or aggressive response.
How does our experience of adveristy train our brain?
Trains the brain to adapt to a hostile environment.
What intereaction lies between physical pathology and mental disorder?
Increased risk of mental disorder if living with physical pathology.
What are some further concepts in psychological developments?
- Reward-based learning
- Executive Function
- Delay-aversion
- Sharing emotion and empathy
- Expressed emotion
What in operant conditioning?
Dopamine neurons fire when you associate an action with a subsequent reward
Please explain the reward deficiency model of adversity
Please explain Hypoactive Reward Response?
- “Addiction”
- –Obesity (food and sugar “addiction”)
- –Drug and alcohol
- –Gambling
- –Porn
- Increased delay-aversion
Please see image that shows the extensive factors relating to patterns of behaviour:
