Lecture Week 6 Flashcards
Sensitivity to Diagnosis Labels
- Sometimes labels are helpful in understanding and treating individuals
- Sometimes labels are confronting and restrictive to individual’s self esteem
- Never refer to a person by their diagnosis alone as this is stigmatising and demeaning.
Danger in using a label alone
- Some people do not experience mental distress in the same way.
- e.g. schizophrenia has 9 symptoms but a person need only present with 5.
- There is a massive difference in the experience of separate individuals who express 5 different symptoms but still have the same diagnosis
The Five P’s of Case Formulation
- Presenting problem
- Predisposing factors
- Precipitants
- Perpetuating factors
- Protective/positive
The Five P’s of Case Formulation - Presenting problem
- What is the client’s problem list?
- What are DSM diagnoses?
The Five P’s of Case Formulation - Predisposing factors
- Over the person’s lifetime, what factors contributed to the development of the problem?
- Think biopsychosocial
The Five P’s of Case Formulation - Precipitants
- Why now?
- What are triggers or events that exacerbated the problem?
The Five P’s of Case Formulation - Perpetuating factors
- What factors are likely to maintain the problem?
- Are there issues that the problem will worsen, if not addressed
The Five P’s of Case Formulation - Protective/positive factors
- What are client strengths that can be drawn upon?
- Are there any social supports or community resources?
The language of diagnosis
- Words like o Suffering from
- o He has “x”
- o Has been diagnosed with . . .
Can be powerful and negative and can disempower the person.
- I prefer to used
- Is living/has lived with
- Has experienced or is experiencing
- I prefer to used
Because they are less inflammatory
- but some people prefer terms like Suffering because that is the experience for them.
Try to use your clients language to reflect
Comorbidity
- When a client presents with multiple diagnoses of mental health
- The comorbidity rate of multiple diagnoses in clients is 80%
Highest types of comorbidities are . . .
- Anxiety and Depression
- Addiction and Mental Distress
What classifies abnormal psychology
- Emotions on their own do not classify mental illness
- It is really a question of severity and duration
- It is also important to note if the emotions interferes with Activities of Daily Living
Define Deviance in Psychology
Thoughts and behaviours that deviate from the current norms
What can be considered abnormal or psychopathology?
- Difficult to draw a line between normal and abnormal
- Diagnoses require judgement about where behaviour falls on a spectrum of behaviours
- Of note we look at
- Deviance
- Personal Distress
- Maladaptive Behaviours
- All three do not have to be met to diagnose psychological disorder
- Psychopathology is often defined socially
Is evil inherently diagnosable Mental Illness
- This is subjective, Evil is a concept of morality that is subjective
- Sometimes people commit crimes and morally offensive acts regardless of right and wrong
Dialectics
The idea that there is no absolute right and wrong
Percentage of prevalence of mental illness in Australia
- 20% or one in 5 people will be diagnosed or experienced mental illness in the last 12 months
- The lifetime prevalence is just under 50%; 49.2%
It turns out that Mental Illness is actually NOT abnormal
Diathesis Stress Model
- Life events + genetic vulnerability determines the level of severity of the Mental disturbance
- Studies of 911 found that PTSD occurred in people who did not have support network to come home to and who already had high stress before the event.
Diathesis treatment options
Look at improving psychosocial stress factors in an individual to improve outcomes
Australian Cultural factors for mental distress
- Around cognition and negative thought
- Life is meaningless
- Things wont change or get better
- Considered higher order symptoms because they required a lot of thinking
African Cultural factors for mental distress
- Report more symptoms like catatonia
- Mental distress presents in a more physical way
- Stressors around safety or nutrition and basic physical needs are more prevalent
DSM-5
Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders v5
ICD-10
- International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems
- Kind of like European equivalent to DSM-5
- Includes physical disease as well as mental disorders
- less focused on checklists than DSM-5
Bipolar Disorder
- Both Bipolar 1 & 2 have depressive lows
- Osscilate between Mania and Depression highs and lows
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