Lecture 6 - Personality and Mental Health Flashcards
What is the diathesis-stress model?
Diathesis: inherent vulnerability to develop illness
Stress: increase risk of developing illness
Together is risk of who is likely to develop health problems
What are potential relationships between diathesis and risk levels?
Linear, exponential, step-change (all or nothing)
Effects unlikely to be simply additive
Why are identifying personality diathesis’ difficult?
Could be several diathesis per disorder (trait x, y, z/gender/age/SES) –> risk of mental health disorder
May be protective factors (social support/personality trait/self-esteem)
Diatheses may be diff sensitive to certain types of stressors
What is the specific vulnerability hypothesis?
SVH: specific vulnerability hypothesis (Blast/Zuroff 1992)
Unemployment vs bullying have diff effect in diathesis X vs Y
What are diatheses for depression?
Female gender, relative w/ depression, death of parent in childhood, lack of social support
Reactive to stressors: divorce, unemployment, physical illness, etc.
What are extensively researched diatheses for depression?
High autonomy: compulsive self-reliance, aversion to depending on others
Predicted stressors (SVH): personal failure (eg. poor exam performance)
Self-critical: hold high standards for self, punishing self-evaluations
Stressors: negative life events they feel responsible for
Pessimistic: explain negative events to stable/global causes, unable to avoid
Stressors: negative life events that could be attributed to stable/global causes
High dependency: anxious attachment, exaggerated need for others + approval from them
Stressors: interpersonal conflict, loss, rejection, separation
What specific vulnerability factors play into high autonomy and dependency?
High autonomy/critical (focused on achievement) –> achievement related stress events –> high risk of depression
High dependency (focused on relationships) –> relationship related stress events –> high risk of depression
If stress events other way round should have lower risk of depression
What did Abela et al. find about SVHs for depression?
Mixed results in tests of this hypothesis
Could be because:
Little focus on other risk/protective factors (eg. Self esteem)
Too much focus on individual stress level relative to group
Researcher can’t classify stressful events for each individual (diff in interpretation + spill over events)
140 children w/ at least 1 parents with past/current depression
Had them do Depressive Experience Qs/Self-Esteem Qs/Depression Inventory/Hassles Scale
Followed up after 1 year, measure of depression every 6 weeks
Found:
No evidence that self-criticism acts as diathesis
Diathesis stress effects apparent for dependency
Dependency acts as diathesis but buffered by protective effects of self esteem
What is schizotypy?
Increased risk of developing schizophrenia/related disorders
DNA (SZ genes) –> CNS abnormalities (Schizotaxia) –> Personality diathesis (schizotypy) (+stressors/potentiators) –> schizophrenia, schizotypic disorders, endophenotypes
What did Kwapil et al. find about schizotypy?
Positive schizotypy: perceptual aberration/magical ideation
Negative schizotypy: physical/social anhedonia
10 year follow up with clinical assessments
People w/ both positive/negative schizotypy found more people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
Positive tend to have mood disorders/substance abuse
Negative tend to have schizoid traits + lower relationship closeness
What did Haslam find about specific vulnerabilities in schizotypy?
Positive –> chaotic environment –> schizophrenia spectrum disorders
Negative –> birth complications –> schizophrenia spectrum disorders
What is the link between schizotypy, psychosis, and creativity?
Some found high levels of schizotypy increase psychosis + creativity
But could be overinclusive thinking in schizophrenia/bisociation in comedy writing
Ando/Claridge/Clark (2014): online schizotypy scales done by comedians/actors + compared with existing ‘normal’ groups
Found actors/comedians scored higher than normal controls on most subscales
Mason/Hort/Woo (2015): poets scored higher than control groups for schizotypy
But also found many met diagnostic criteria for self-reported bipolar, highest levesl for avant-garde poets
