Exam 1 Flashcards
How do we determine if a behavior is abnormal?
- circumstance/situation
- developmental ability
- medical history
- substance use (drugs/alcohol)
- age
- mental ability
- pattern
- culture
- species
Book: Psychological Disorder is a…(1)
-psychological dysfunction breakdown in function of 3 areas: cognitive, emotional, behavioral
Cognitive
- thoughts
- Gerald thought the picture had a headache
- breakup our thoughts get distorted into feeling unlovable and that you’ll never love again
- not capable of being happy-worthless
Emotional
- feelings
- depression; sadness and hopelessness
- anxiety; fear
- schizophrenia; mismatch in some cases could be happy but showing signs of sadness
Behavioral
- actions
- psych disorder; screaming when no one or nothing is there
- depression; can’t stop sleeping
- OCD; can’t stop checking
Psychological Disorder is associated with…(2)
- distress-suffering-majority of disorders are not pleasant (exception: mania and antisocial personality disorder-lack empathy; don’t feel distress but cause distress)
- impaired functioning-when behavior is disordered it gets in the way; ex: can affect relationships, school, work (anxiety: when someone catastrophizes they may struggle taking exams, depressed and can’t get out of bed)
Anorexia
- distress-suffering aspect as well as impaired functioning aspect
- all they think about is food
- body is breaking down
- changes body in harmful ways and can ultimately lead to death
Psychological Disorder has responses that are (3)
- not typical/culturally expected
- developmental=age appropriate?
- culture: continuity (will find across cultures-where there are humans there are these disorders which indicates a genetic basis but how the culture can interpret the disorder may change) cultural norms between cultures, between groups within a culture, over time within a culture, in different environments
- all 3 criteria are necessary; inadequate when considered alone
Between Cultures
- USA vs. other cultures
- food-some people eat insects, we don’t
- gestures
- dating-arranged marriage
- dress-specifically women (hijabs vs. not)
Between Groups Within A Culture
- the Duggars-isolationist view that’s very structured very outlier religous group (can’t have physical contact before marriage, keep kids from outside world by homeschooling, blanket training-smack baby when it leaves the area).
- binge drinking-normal for our age not for adults
- hook up culture-STDs on the rise in nursing homes
Over Time Within A Culture
- homosexuality used to be considered a psychological disorder until 1974-civil rights movement and research found there is no difference in psychological health based on sexual orientation
- transgender individuals today vs. in the past
In Different Environments
-sporting event vs. classroom: yelling at ref when he makes a bad call is not acceptable in a classroom toward a teacher
Insanity
- legal term
- means you did not know the difference between right and wrong when the crime was committed
Psychopathology
-scientific study of psychological disorders
Models of Abnormal Behavior
- historic
- psychoanalytic or psychodynamic
- learning
- cognitive
- biological
Historic
- explained mental illness/unusual behaviors by supernatural or biological means
- supernatural: punished by gods; possessed by devil
- biological: hysteria: caused by a wondering uterus-more emotional without a child because the natural state of the uterus is to have a baby in in
- humors: something in the blood that’s problematic and the properties of your blood determine physical and mental health-treated by leaching.
Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic
- Freud=powerful inner forces=shape personality and motivate behavior
- Psyche: no empirical support for these strucutres) unconscious
- id=thought of as the infant-impulsive and wants immediate gratification; driven by sex and aggression but are unaware of the drives
- superego=angel on your shoulder; driven by conscience; tells you to do the right thing and develops over time by parents and society telling you what’s right
- ego=mediator; therapy=focus on intrapsychic conflicts, childhood developmental stages; anal-retentive: stuck when stress–>return to behaviors
Learning
- classical conditioning: learn relationship between stimuli=person reacts to stimuli C=learned
- UCS–>UCR
- CS–>CR
- irene got trapped in a small space as a kid and experienced unconditioned fear
- something that was neutral is now scary and small spaces become associated with being trapped
- small space is the CS that became associated with the UCS that was the shed
- so her conditioned response is fear
- exposure breaks the connection between the CS and UCS
- operant conditioning: person acts on the environment=focus on consequence; behavioral therapy (look at chart)
- reinforcement increases behavior
- punishment decreases behavior
- if you want behavior to increase give something they like or take away something they don’t like
- if you want behavior to decrease give something they don’t like and take away something they like
Cognitive
- irrational, distorted cognitions lead to psych problems
- A (event)–>B (belief)–>C (consequence)
- A=breakup
- B=belief about the event (i.e. that you’re not worthy) makes you feel lonely/sad
- C=loneliness/sadness
- people who are anxious have to work on their catastrophizing which is their irrational thought process at work
Biological
- behavioral genetics
- heritability-no single gene for any psych disorder
- polygenic-many genes–>each has a small contribution
- family studies-what are the # of relatives with the disorder–not only genetic; take away what they teach as well-they make sure you learn early on the world is a scary place
- adoption studies-want to separate out people who gave you your genes and the people that taught you about your environment
- twin studies: identical 100% shared, fraternal 50% shared, regular 50% shared
- identical twins are more alike when it comes to psych disorders than fraternal twins
- if one twin has schizophrenia there is a 48% chance the other does as well (more concordant than fraternal)
- if you don’t have the genes for it it won’t develop but if you do have the genes also need the environment
- fraternal twins are more concordant than normal siblings because they share the same environment at the same time
Concordance
-if person X has it what’s the likelihood that Y has it
Marry Someone With Schizophrenia and You’re Schizphrenic
- your chances of being schizophrenic are doubled from 1% to 2%
- assortative mating: spend time with people like you
- share environment and time which could bring out psychosis in you
Integrating Models: Diathesis-stress Model
- diathesis=inherited predisposition-biological-genetic
- stress: environmental stressor-outside of you
- disorder: will not manifest until stress is present
- ex: Irene and jeff; irene is loaded with anxiety-high diathesis and jeff has low diathesis for anxiety so Irene needs less stress to set her off whereas Jeff would need a lot of stress to trigger a response
Diagnosis Definition
- the identification and labeling of a disease based on its signs and symptoms (plural, one sign or symptom does not make a disorder)
- greek: discrimination/distinguishing between 2 possibilities
Diagnosis Results From
- assessment: collect info from a variety of sources
- behavioral observation: problem is reactivity=we behave differently if we’re being observed
- evaluation: questionnaires; often standardized so they are valid; quick but people may lie
- interview with client or others: primarily self-reports; may tell you what you want to hear and we are not good reporters of our own behavior (self preservation vs. sometimes we just don’t pay attention
- look at pattern/set of symptoms to assign diagnosis: have to have particular symptoms
Values of Diagnossi
- guides intervention=
- treatment planning: different treatments are differentially effective
- prognosis: the course of the disorder; want a sense of how things are going to proceed
- etiology: the cause; if we know the cause it gives us info about the treatment and could also lead to intervention - Facilitates communication=provides common language
- therapist may need to talk to other healthcare professionals or other therapists
- therapist may need to talk to prescribers of medication
- therapist may need to talk to insurance agents
Adjustment Disorder
- rightnow the person is having difficulties and needs to learn skills
- can put things in this diagnosis that don’t meet criteria for anything else
Concerns of Diagnosis
- labeling: classify the person instead of the disorder
- ex: Johnny has ADHD advantages: not make negative attributions toward him and it may explain his behavior better; treatment; mom might understand better. Disadvantages: social stigma-teacher might look at him/treat him differently; might single him out instead of seeing behavior as normative
Szasz
believed that most of what we call mental illness are “problems in living”
- when you call someone mentally ill you give them the role of the patient which means they lose their personal responsibility and control
- control goes to medical professionals and creates preconceptions
Rosenhan
- 8 confederates working with him (in on the research) and sent them to different institutions and told them to present with one symptom of auditory hallucinations
- problem should not have received a diagnosis with only one symptom a diagnosis is a pattern of symptoms
- all admitted and all are given the same diagnosis of schizophrenia
- once admitted told them to act normally staff all treated them according to the diagnosis but the other patients didn’t treat them according to the diagnosis.
- Patients live with the diagnosis, spend more time with the confederates, don’t know the diagnosis, etc.
- released: schizophrenia in remission
Stigma
- sign of social unacceptability
- depression/anxiety used to be stigmatized: more common now; don’t make us uncomfortable
- schizophrenia/autism are still stigmatized: have symptoms that make us uncomfortable
Classifying Disorders
- DSM
- published by American Psychiatric Association
- standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in US
- issues to consider: reliability and validity
Reliability
- consistency-get same result when classifying the same individual
- interrater: 2 therapists evaluating 1 person should come up with same diagnosis/conclusion
- test-retest: 1 therapist looking at client over time
Validity
- measures what it is supposed to measure
- depression symptoms that hang together