Lecture 1 - Normality

Question 1

What are the 5 factors of abnormality?

Answer 1

• statistical rarity
• norm violation
• personal distress
• disability/dysfunction
• unexpectedness

Question 2

Define “psychological disorder”. What is the issue with this?

Answer 2

Behavioural, emotions or cognitive dysfunctions that are unexpected in their cultural context and associated with personal distress or impaired functioning

ISSUE: not all criteria always operating (eg. sex offenders, personality disorders, substance use)

Question 3

What is “psychopathology”?

Answer 3

A descriptive term

Used to describe thoughts/feelings/behaviours which was indicative of mental illness

Question 4

What is the difference between a sign, a symptom and a syndrome?

Answer 4

• sign: objective (eg. poor eye contact, fast speech)
• symptom: subjective (eg. low mood, paranoia)
• syndrome: a particular pattern of signs and symptoms that indicate the existence of a disorder

Question 5

What is the difference between a disorder and a disease?

Answer 5

• disorder: syndrome which can be discriminated from other syndromes (age, course, prognosis may be known)
• disease: requires indications of abnormal physiological processes or structural abnormalities

Question 6

What are the positive and negatives of diagnosing psychopathology?

Answer 6

POSITIVES

• assists communication
• inform assessment and treatment
• provides info (experience, cause, treatment, prognosis)
• needed for collecting stats/research
• drives research
• current models recognise multiple causes + sociohistorical context

NEGATIVES

• bias
• restrict thinking
• jargon
• inhibit research
• “mental disorders are a myth”

Question 7

What are the benefits of the categorical vs. dimensional approach to psychopathology?

Answer 7

CATEGORICAL

• better clinical/administrative utility
• easier communication

DIMENSIONAL

• lack of sharp boundaries b/w disorders, and b/w disorders and normality
• greater capacity to detect change/facilitate monitoring
• allows development of treatment-relevant symptom targets

Question 8

What was Kraepelin’s big idea?

Answer 8

The same symptom may be present in a number of disorders, but they way the symptoms cluster together is what leads to the diagnosis

Question 9

What did Kraepelin do?

Answer 9

• described: dementia praecox, manic depressive illness and paranoia
• 10 types of dementia praecox,
• first psychiatric textbook

Question 10

What are the weaknesses of the DSM-5?

Answer 10

• impairment is crucial in diagnosis
• categorical > limited
• use of clinical judgment
• ethnic/cultural considerations
• describes diseases NOT people
• constructs NOT proven entities

Question 11

What are the 7 models of abnormal behaviour?

Answer 11

• social and development
• learning: conditioning/social
• cognitive-behavioural: ABC model
• biopsychosocial
• stress diathesis: resilience (fam environment, temperament, SE, previous experience)
• psychoanalytic: structure (id, ego, superego); psychosexual dev; defence mechanisms
• biological: genetics, brain damage, neurochem, physiology

Question 12

What is cross-cutting symptom measurement?

Answer 12

• quantitative measures of important clinical areas that will be relevant beyond any set of syndromal criteria
• usually self-report
• used at initial evaluation to establish baseline
• used to track changes