Lecture 1-4

Question 1

What is the 4 most common mental disorders and how prevalent are they?

Answer 1

Depression (17%)
Alcohol-Dependence (14%)
Social Phobia (13%)
Specific Phobia (11%)

Question 2

What is the % chance of having 1+ mental disorders in a lifetime?

Answer 2

48%

Question 3

What is the % chance of having 1+ mental disorder in the last 12 months?

Answer 3

29%

Question 4

What is the % or occurrence in a lifetime of having no, 1, 2, 3+ disorders?

Answer 4

None: 52%
One: 21%
Two: 13%
Three or more: 14%

Question 5

What % of people will seek help for their disorders in a lifetime and in the last 12 months?

Answer 5

Lifetime: 40%

12 Months: 20%

Question 6

What is the problem with defining abnormality as quantitatively (difference in degree) different from what we are used to?

Answer 6

Where’s the cut-off between normal and abnormal?

Question 7

What is wrong with defining abnormality as qualitatively (type of experience) different from what we are used to?

Answer 7

The experiences could be drug-induced.

Question 8

What is wrong with defining abnormality as a reaction that is out of proportion to the situation?
How do you know if a reaction is “out-of-proportion?”

Answer 8

What about severe reactions to situations? (They could seem out-of-place.)

Question 9

What is wrong with defining abnormality as statistically infrequent (how rare it is)?

Answer 9

Many desirable traits are rare (ex. IQ).

Question 10

What is wrong with defining abnormality as behavior that violates social norms?

Answer 10

Norms change.

Question 11

What is wrong with defining abnormality as behavior that is dangerous to self or others?

Answer 11

Fighters, soldiers, etc.

Question 12

What are the egos two main functions?

Answer 12

1. to mediate id and superego.
2. to screen threatening impulses that arise from the id. Uses defense mechs. to prevent forbidden urges from reaching awareness.

Question 13

How can defense mechanisms be both healthy and unhealthy?

Answer 13

Healthy if they protect us from anxiety-provoking innate urges. Unhealthy if they are so strong they distort reality and lead to neurosis.

Question 14

What 2 types of disorders does the psychodynamic model do well at treating?

Answer 14

Conversion and dissociative disorders.

Question 15

What are Neo-Freudians (ego-analysts)?

Answer 15

View ego as capable of more awareness and having more control over ID - thus, don’t need to delve into childhood memories.

Question 16

What is the basic assumption of psychotherapy?

Answer 16

Neurotic symptoms are defenses that protect the person from underlying conflicts.

Question 17

What are the main goals of psychotherapy?

Answer 17

Bring underlying conflict into open and getting the patient to deal with the problems directly rather than defending through neurotic conflicts.

Question 18

How does the Humanistic Perspective describe how disorders come to be?

Answer 18

People suffer due to social forces that block the emergence of inner goodness. - They come due to accepting parental conditions of worth and denying organismic needs.

Question 19

What are the goals of client centered therapy?

Answer 19

1. Eliminate unrealistic conditions of worth. 2. Get person to accept organismic needs as normal (to accept themselves for who they are).

Question 20

How does client-centered therapy meet its goals (3)?

Answer 20

1. Unconditional positive regard. 2. Accurate empathic understanding. 3. Genuineness.

Question 21

What are the two types of accurate empathic understanding?

Answer 21

1. Primary empathy - Paraphrasing

2. Adv. Accurate Empathy - Go beyond what patient says and add some insight.

Question 22

What are the three factors for successful treatment?

Answer 22

1. Treatment-specific factors
2. Client-specific factors (motivation)
3. Nonspecific (or “common”) factors (characteristics shared by all (or most) therapies. Ex. Genuineness.)

Question 23

What does Rogerian therapy treat well?

Answer 23

Adjustment problems.

Question 24

Define: aversive therapy

Answer 24

Classical conditioning therapy in which a pleasant stimulus is paired with an unpleasant stimulus in order to produce an aversion to the present stimulus.

Question 25

Define: counterconditioning

Answer 25

Classical conditioning method that involves: Replacing the old association with a new one.

Question 26

Define: Aversive

Answer 26

Tending to avoid or causing avoidance of a noxious or punishing stimulus.