Mental Health and Wellbeing Flashcards
What are mental health problems?
They are human experiences, emotions perceptions, judgements, thoughts, physiological sensations, urges, motivations, and behaviours that cause distress and difficulties in everyday life
What does the diagnostic classification of mental health problems attempt to do?
Attempts to categorise and classify these into discrete entities called ‘diagnoses’.
It aims to improve reliability:
to ensure that when we talk about these experiences, we are all confidant that we are talking about and studying the same phenomena
What are the 2 types of classification system of mental health problems?
1- diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM)
2- international classification of diseases
How is the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders developed?
Developed through taskforces, which are committees of experts in the scientific and clinical practice in both the field of psychiatry and psychology, coming together and trying to determine what are the kinds of categories of mental health difficulty that exist in the world and describing those difficulties in terms of criteria which are definitional of the disorders themselves
What are the 3 groups of influence of mental health?
Macro, interpersonal and intrapersonal
What is macro, in regard to one of the three broad classes of influence?
Social and large-scale factors e.g., poverty, dsicrimination
What is interpersonal, in regard to one of the three broad classes of influence?
Group level, social factors
e.g., attachment, parenting, peer group influences
What is intrapersonal, in regard to one of the three broad classes of influence?
Traditional, more psychological based explanations
e.g., personal historical factors, behavioural and cognitive factors
What are the two broad hypotheses that have been forwarded in terms of the link between poverty and mental health?
- Social causation hypothesis
2. Social drift hypothesis
What is the social causation hypothesis?
poverty and stress associated with poverty lead to mental health problems
What is the social drift hypothesis?
people with mental health problems find it difficult to sustain employment, and therefore they drift into states of poverty
How are poverty and social exclusion linked to mental health problems?
People in poverty deal with extremely negative perceptions of being in poverty
There are significant stereotypes around people who are living in poverty, these can be very harmful
How are mechanisms linked to mental health problems?
We can think of several mechanisms by which early life events lead to psychological problems for frankly, traumatic experiences. Since these memories are unpleasant and difficult the person will quite often want to move away from that unpleasant feeling, and so quite often will do things to avoid the activation of these memories and avoid cues and triggers and therefore the memories will remain unprocessed, and they can represent quite an incoherent self-narrative
How do cognitive processes link to depression?
There is an over-general memory bias in depression, hard to remember specific episodes of happiness for example. This is suggested to be due to rumination, in which when people are depressed, they tend to ruminate and turn their attention inwards. The constant going over material in the mind leads to a sort of sense of sameness and the specificity of encoding is reduced
How do cognitive processes link to anxiety?
in anxiety states, there is a selective attention to threat stimuli e.g., stimuli that relate to threat are attended to quicker, that attention lingers on the threat stimuli etc. Social bonds to a group for example are important to people, so often people are scanning their environment for cues that there is a social threat
What does the cognitive model created by Clark (1986) suggest?
This model suggests that people perceive an internal or external trigger as being a perceived threat which will make them more aware of these physiological and cognitive symptoms
What is the strange situation test? (concept by Margaret Ainsworth and John Bowlby)
Involves a parent and their young baby coming into an experimental situation. The parent and child would come in and play and interact in the environment. Then a researcher comes in, a stranger to the child, and begins to interact and play. At some point the parent subtly leaves the room. After a short while they come back. What the colleagues are looking at is what is the child’s behaviour in different parts of the experiment.
What are the 3 classifications of child attachment highlighted by the strange situation test?
1- secure
2- insecure avoidant
3-insecure ambivalent
What was the fourth type of attachment Mahan Solomon added to the strange situation test?
disorganised insecure attachment
What is secure attachment in regards to the strange situation test?
A securely attached child will come in at the start of the experiment and explore the situation and use their parent as a secure base and then go explore other things in the situation. When the stranger comes in, most securely attached children will tend to lean towards their parent a little bit but as the interaction occurs, they will go out from their parent and explore the stranger and allow the stranger to play with them. Some will show some concern when the parent leaves, but it isn’t noticeable. The securely attached child will acknowledge the parents return and ask for a hug before returning to play.
What is insecure attachment in regards to the strange situation test?
the behaviour of children who are insecurely attached varies according to the different attachment style. For example, the avoidant attached child will tend not to seek contact when the parent comes back in. The other attachment styles will perform in diff ways. The ambivalent child would sometimes seek proximity, sometimes not
What is the buffering hypothesis?
social support acts as a buffer between stress and mental health difficulty
Where did the concept of flourishing come from?
The call to study positive aspects of human life led to the concept of flourishing
What are the 4 key pathways of flourshing?
- Family
- Work
- Education
- Religious communities
What is the ‘Broaden and Build’ Theory?
This theory shows that when we experience a positive emotion, our attention expands, and therefore will be more likely to engage in novel exploratory behaviour that finds solutions to problems
What does compassionate mind training involve?
It actively trains and cultivates a more self-soothing and self-kindly stance towards the self
What is health anxiety?
preoccupation with having an illness
What is the aim of cognitive behavioural therapy?
In CBT we want to gradually slowly develop a shared understanding with our client and teach them ways that we’re going to break the chains between their health anxiety
What is cognitive behavioural therapy structured with and based on?
Structured with sessions having a focus and agenda
Based on a collaborative relationship with psychologist and patient working together to improve the person’s situation
What does cognitive behavioural therapy contain?
Containing and exploratory type of therapy trying to contain the person’s anxiety
What does the power, threat, meaning framework look at?
specifically looks at the effects that power and threat have on people’s difficulties
What does the power, threat, meaning framework help us to understand?
It is a new way to understand why people sometimes experience a range of stress, despair etc,
What is psychological flexibility seen as?
It can be seen as a generalised behavioural response style to different circumstances and stimuli
What is psychological flexibility?
It is a theoretical clinical model that underpins acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
What is the ACT model composed of?
It is composed of six overlapping and interdependent processes that lead someone to have psychological flexibility
What does BEACHes stand for?
Stands for Brief Engagement and Acceptance Coaching in Community and Hospice Settings
What is BEACHes?
It is a brief form of intervention that is coaching based and designed to use ACT coaching in a palliative care or hospice setting
