Clinical Pyschology Content Flashcards
Define clinical psychology
Clinical psychology is a branch of psychology that uses scientific theory for the purpose of understanding and preventing psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote wellbeing and personal development.
What are the 4 D’s for diagnosing mental disorders?
- deviation
- distress
- dysfunction
- danger
What is deviation?
Deviation refers to behaviours or thoughts that are different from how society expects us to behave.
- e.g. highly deviant behaviours like chronic lying or stealing
What is distress?
Distress is when a person is experiencing significant or emotional pain or suffering (such as anxiety and depression) that affects themselves and others around them and can determine if treatment is needed.
What is dysfunction?
Dysfunction is when our psychological state prevents us from effectively satisfying our social and occupational roles and daily life.
- for example, a man being so scared of crowds that he found himself unable to get on buses to go to work
What is danger?
Danger is if a persons behaviour is potentially harmful to themselves or others (e.g. self harm) and may be a sign of severe psychological problems.
What is schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder characterised by a profound disruption or cognition and emotion.
What are the 2 types of symptoms of schizophrenia?
The classification systems distinguish between positive symptoms and negative symptoms.
Positive symptoms= behaviours which are additional to normal behaviours (e.g. hearing voices)
Negative symptoms= behaviours which appear to be absent from normal behaviours (e.g. loss of drive/motivation to do easy task)
What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?
- hallucinations
- delusions
- thought insertion
*disorganised thinking
What are hallucinations?
Hallucinations are false perceptions that affect a persons senses (5 senses) that is different from what others do not. They do not have a basis of reality.
What are delusions?
Delusions are false beliefs or misinterpretations of events and their significance. They seem strange to most people and are easy to prove wrong.
What is thought insertion?
Thought insertion is the feeling as if someone’s thoughts are not their own, but rather belong to someone else and have been inserted into their mind.
- the individual may not necessarily know where the thought is coming from, but will be able to discriminate between their own thoughts and those inserted into their minds.
What is disorganised thinking?
Disorganised thinking is a failure to be able to think straight and becomes apparent in patients speech patterns. Patients may have a hard time organising their thoughts and move rapidly from one topic to the other and give answers to unrelated questions.
Define positive and negative symptoms
Positive symptoms= any change in behaviour or thoughts ( such as hallucinations or delusions)
Negative symptoms= where people appear to withdraw from the world around them and are emotionless
What are the 3 ways that biological explanations of schizophrenia can be examined in?
- Biochemical
- Genetic
- Brain structure
Briefly describe biochemicals in schizophrenia.
Research suggests that one of the main causes of schizophrenia is thought to be due to chemical imbalances in the brain,the balance of neurotransmitters is disrupted.
What is a neurotransmitter?
A neurotransmitter is a chemical messenger that’s job is to carry chemical signals from one neuron to the next target cell.
What is the dopamine hypothesis?
The dopamine hypothesis in simple terms states that schizophrenics suffered from an excessive amount of dopamine. This causes the neuron’s that use dopamine to fire too often and transmit too many messages, and this may produce many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Briefly describe what studies have suggested with genetic factors in schizophrenia
It suggests that:
- schizophrenia tends to run in families
- the severity of the parents disorders influences the likelihood of the child developing schizophrenia
- all forms of schizophrenia occur within the same family
Give a brief explanation of brain structure in people with schizophrenia
Research has suggested that the brain structure in people with schizophrenia is often different from those without it. Negative symptoms are associated with structural brain abnormalities and therefore do not respond to dopamine drugs.
What are the main features in the brain with schizophrenia?
- decreased brain weight
- enlarged ventricles
- abnormalities in the front lobe
What are the 2 models in the psychological explanations?
- the behavioural model
- The cognitive model
What is the behavioural model?
This view is primarily explained in terms of operant conditioning and observational learning, people with schizophrenia, cues or reinforcements have been inappropriate so they stop attending and responding to the social cues and focus on inappropriate cues, this reinforces their odd behaviour.
What is the cognitive model?
The cognitive model sees characteristic disorders in schizophrenia as being causes rather than consequences.
