Module 1 revision Flashcards
What is psychopathology?
Psychopathology includes the study of clinical descriptions, diagnosis, aetiology epidemiology, prognosis and treatment
What is a mental disorder?
is a syndrome characterised by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognitive, emotion, regulation or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological or developmental processes underlying mental functioning
What distinguishes a mental disorder from normal behaviour?
Significant distress or disability and not explained through a culturally approached response or social deviance between individual and society, APA, 2013
What is reliability?
Reliability = the consistency of the measurement over time
What is inter-rater reliability?
the degree to which 2 independent observers agree on a clinical observation
What is test-retest reliability
The extent to which people receive similar scores across time after taking a test / clinical observation
- only tested on things not liable to change over weeks/months, eg. IQ rather than mood
What is alternate-form reliability and why may it be used?
- The extent to which two forms of the same test are consistent over time
- researchers may use different tests of the same dimension to avoid first-order/repetition effects in participants/clients)
What is internal consistency reliability + example?
Where items on a test are related within the questionnaire, eg. the scores should correlate with one another if they adequately measure a disorder
eg. scores of dry mouth and muscle tension should be higher in anxiety
What is validity?
Whether a measure measures what it is supposed to measure,
eg. whether the questionnaire accurately measures “hostility”, “anxiety”
What is criterion validity and what does it measure?
Criterion validity measures whether test scores are linked with other tests measuring the same dimension,
eg. whether anxiety scores are similar across multiple anxiety tests
What is content validity and what does it measure?
Content validity is whether a measure adequately covers the domain of interest,
Example - a social anxiety test covering anxiety in a range of different social settings
What is construct validity?
- Construct validity is about interpreting a test as a measure of a construct not observed overtly, known as an inferred attribute, eg. distorted cognition
What 4 things does construct validity want to predict?
- biological vulnerability
- triggers
- mental + physiological symptoms
- functional impairments
“A group of high school students given the same IQ test in a row” is an example of what?
Test-retest reliability
Ameasureofthetendencytoblame
oneselfisdeveloped,andresearchersthen test whetheritpredictsdepression,
whetheritisrelatedtochildhoodabuse,andwhetheritisrelatedtoless assertivenessintheworkplace
is a measure of what?
Construct validity
Ameasureofdepressionisdeveloped,andresearchersthentestwhetherit predictsotherinterview-basedand othermeasuresofdepression
is a measure of what?
Criterion validity
Peopleareinterviewedbytwodifferentdoctors.Researchersexamineif the doctorsagreeaboutthe
diagnosis
is a measure of what?
inter-rater reliability
Who started ideas about clustering syndromes as disorders?
In psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin in 1883
noticed groups of symptoms of behaviour clustered together as a syndrome, he hypothesised each to have their own cause, first introduced explanations for dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and manic-depressive psychosis (bipolar disorder)
What are some positives of the ICD and when was it founded
- Founded in 1939 by the WHO current is the ISD-11 (2018)
- available to public at no cost
- Some conditions not in DSM, eg. C-PTSD, gaming disorder, compulsive sexual disorder
What are 2 limitations of the ICD?
- Uses guidelines not criteria, issues for reliability for diagnosis and inter-rater reliability may be affected
- Only one personality disorder present with different domain areas similar to DSM-5, eg. borderline pattern and some new, eg. negative affectivity
What are some markers of the DSM-5?
- Specific markers for diagnosis and good operational definitions and descriptors of a disorder,
Uses clinical discretion + empirical evidence and good reliability
The DSM-5 considered different types of information affecting diagnosis, such as life-span developmental approaches, gender, culture, physical health, disability and diagnostic assessment instruments
Field studies were done to evaluate changes made to DSM-5
Is the multi-axial system still used?
- Diagnoses were listed on separate dimensions / axes, and required judgments on each of the five axes, forcing the diagnostician to consider a broad range of information, but is no longer used since DSM-III
What are 3 types of additions to the DSM-5?
- made arabic letters DSM-5
- New disorders
- disruptive mood dysregulation disorder
- hoarding disorder
- binge-eating disorder
- premenstrual dysphoric disorder
- gambling disorder
- prolonged grief disorder - Combined disorders
- substance abuse + dependence → substance use disorder
autism + Asperger’s → autism spectrum disorder.
Why is the DSM disorders arranged by symptoms instead of biological or genetic etiologies?
we don’t have enough info to base it on aetiology / biological reductionism
Why are DSM disorders organised in chapter categories?
The chapters are grouped in categories to show shared causes and comorbidity patterns, eg. OCD disorders, ED disorders, personality disorders
What are the 3 Cultural additions to the DSM-5-TR?
- Culture-related issues are discussed in the text for almost all disorders
- A cultural formulation interview -
16 questions to understand how culture may be shaping clinical presentation - An appendix of cultural-specific syndromes of distress, + cultural explanations about the causes of symptoms, illness, and distress
What are the arguments for and against including broad syndromes across cultures or to differentiate cultural concepts?
- Some argue for a cross-cultural approach, pointing to similarities between cultural concepts of distress and DSM diagnostic criteria
- Others argue that cultural concepts of distress are central and that ignoring them may lead to underestimation of psychiatric disorder prevalence
What are the 2 main criticisms of the DSM?
- Too many diagnoses
DSM-5-TR even includes the category “unspecified,” disorders which is to be used when a person meets many but not all of the criteria for a diagnosis
- Too many disorders? Could some be grouped/clustered given high comorbidity rates (45%) is the norm?
HOW is caffeine intoxication disorder as a mental illness? Or acute stress disorder?
What are 2 reasons why might it be a good idea to cluster disorders together?
- Many disorder have high comorbidity rates often occur because symptoms are present in multiple diagnostic categories, eg. social withdrawal, repetitive behaviours
- disorders often share risk factors and treatment plans in common, eg. SSRIs, genetic vulnerability to multiple disorders
In the case of Susannah Cahalan, who had anti-NMDA-receptor-autoimmune encephalitis - what was she misdiagnosed as and what do we need to consider?
- Schizophrenia
- Hence we need to consider that behavioural symptoms can be indicative of various conditions.
What does the HiTOP diagnostic model - Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology use to cluster disorders together?
- The HiTOP uses patterns of COMORBIDITY to group disorders
Example - somatoform, internalising, thought disorder, disinhibited externalising, antagonistic externalising and detachment
What does the Research Domain Criteria, or RDoC use to cluster disorders together? (NIMH)
The RDoc focuses on RISK FACTORS relevant to multiple conditions,
Example - cognitive or social problems, lack of emotional regulation
Why must diagnostic criteria be clear and quantifiable?
When diagnostic criteria are vague, eg. “abnormally elevated mood” - clinicians are liable to personal biases in making judgements
What are the 4 steps clinicians go through before making a diagnosis?
- Clinical interviews
- Physical exams
- Other tests and referrals
- Clinical based assessment
What are the 3 reasons why a diagnosis is made in psychopathology?
- Describe - To give a description to accommodate signs and syndromes within a social construction in a categorisation system
- Find causes - into origins and triggers of behaviours
- To predict - describe behaviours and impaired functions
What are 4 disadvantages to receiving a diagnosis as a patient?
- A diagnosis is descriptive not an explanation, underlying processes may be overemphasised
- Labels can cause stigma and discrimination and affect self-concept
- Overlooks lived experience “client with x” not “x person”
- Could be a misdiagnosis - decision making is still a risk to error,
Decision making can lead to false positives/negatives. What is a false positive and false negative?
(type 1 error) False positives - when therapist makes decision that you have something and you don’t
(type 2 error) False negative - when therapist makes decision that you don’t have something and you do
What are the respective implications of receiving a false negative and a false positive?
- False negatives accidentally deny someone to treatment
- False positives offer a patient the wrong/inappropriate type of treatment