Descriptive Psychopathology Flashcards
What is descriptive psychopathology?
The study of the significant causes and processes in the development of mental disorders (verb).
Also the manifestation of these disorders (noun).
So you can study psychopathology, or you can have psychopathology.
What is the purpose of classification?
Communicate - common language
Organise and retrieve information
Template for describing similarities/differences
Means of making predictions about course and outcomes
Source of concepts used in theory and experimentation
What is syndromal diagnosis
Syndrom is a group of signs and symptoms that co-occur in a common pattern and characterise a particular abnormality or disease.
In psychopathology it is the oldest and most influential approach to classification and diagnosis.
What are some disadvantages of syndromal diagnosis
Tendency of syndromal groupings to be reified/treated as though they are entities themselves and represent actual disease. (when they are simply ideas!)
High levels of comorbidity
What are some advantages of syndromal diagnosis
Common language with medical field
Mental illness treated like any other illness
Classification and diagnosis gives legitimacy for study
What are the two dominant classification systems in psychopathology?
ICD 10
DSM-5
Differences between ICD-10 and DSM-5?
ICD is for all diseases; DSM just for mental disorders.
ICD produced by WHO, DSM produced by APA
ICD’s primary focus is to help countries to reduce diseases, DSM’s primary focus is to inform US psychiatrists/health insurance agencies/pharmaceutical industry
ICD is approved by the World Health Assembly, DSM is approved by American Psychiatric Association
ICD distributed broadly at very low cost; DSM raises revenue for the APA (through book sales, related products, copyright permissions etc)
What are the stated aims of the DSM?
Guide clinical practice
facilitate research
improve communication amongst clinicians and researchers
Improve collection of clinical information
Serve as an educational tool for psychopathology
How is the DSM intended to be used?
By clinicians and researchers of many theoretical orientations
By all MH professionals
Across settings - inpatient/outpatient/consultation/hospital
As a tool for collecting and communicating health statistics
What are some characteristics of DSM?
Descriptive, not etiological
Categorical, not dimensional
Rule of parsimony (minimum number of diagnoses to account for presenting symptoms)
What are the three sections of the DSM about?
Section 1 - introduction and information on how to use the updated manual
Section 2 - Diagnostic information on various disorders
Section 3 - information on conditions requiring further research, as well as cultural formulations and a glossary
What are the sections of the DSM called?
Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other psychotic disorders
Bipolar and related disorders
Depressive disorders
Anxiety Disorders
Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders
Trauma- and Stressor-related disorders
Dissociative disorders
Somatic symptom and related disorders
Feeding and eating disorders
Elimination disorders
Sleep-wake disorders
Sexual dysfunctions
Gender dysphoria
Distruptive, impusle control and conduct disorders
Substance-related and addictive disorders
Personality disorders
Paraphilic Disorders
Other Mental Disorders
Medication-induced movement disorders and other adverse effects of medication.
Other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.
What are some of the problems with DSM?
labelling/stigmatisation inconsistencies in use reliability problems not unique to the individual lack of homogeneity in presentation comorbidity and overlap gender bias ethnocentricity influence of the pharmaceutical industry
What is a sign, symptom, syndrome and diagnosis?
Signs are what we observe
Symptoms are what the patient reports
Syndrom is the ‘running together’ of signs and symptoms
diagnoses are made through syndromes, not individual signs and symptoms
What types of hallucinations can a person have?
Auditory - common in schizophrenia - persecutory voices
Visual - occur in organic states rather than functional psychoses, and are uncommon in schizophrenia. Delusional interpretation of normal perception is more likely.
Somatic or tactile - hallucinations of bodily sensations (e.g. - I feel warm on my neck, so there is an infrared camera beaming on me)
Olfactory and gustatory - can occur in Sz, but also epilepsy and other organic states
