Paper3: Mental Health

Question 1

Who created the 4 definitions of abnormal behaviour?

Answer 1

• Rosenhan and Seligman

Question 2

What are the four definitions of abnormal behaviour?

Answer 2

• statistical infrequency
• deviation from social norms
• deviation from ideal mental health
• failure to function adequately

Question 3

Describe statistical infrequency

Answer 3

• high IQ
• musical brilliance

Question 4

Describe failure to function

Answer 4

• unable to maintain a job, education or hygiene

Question 5

Describe deviation from social norms

Answer 5

• dressing outlandish
• talking to yourself

Question 6

Describe deviation from ideal mental health

Answer 6

• lacking positivity
• losing touch with reality

Question 7

Describe ICD

Answer 7

• covers all illnesses

Question 8

Describe DSM

Answer 8

• covers psychological disorders

Question 9

Describe affective disorders

Answer 9

• affects mood
• depression
• bipolar

Question 10

Describe psychotic disorders

Answer 10

• loses touch with reality
• schizophrenia

Question 11

Describe anxiety

Answer 11

• generalised anxiety
• phobias

Question 12

What was the aim of Rosenhan 1973

Answer 12

• test the diagnostic ability of medical professionals in USA

Question 13

What was the methodof Rosenhan?

Answer 13

• pseudopatients make appointment at outpatient clinic in 12 hospitals
• symptoms of hearing voice saying random words ‘thud’ or ‘hollow’

Question 14

What were the results to Rosenhan?

Answer 14

• all but one patient admitted to psychiatric ward for schizophrenia
• medical practitioners treated patients badly
• left them alone
• noted that all behaviour was abnormal
• all patients discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission
• patients felt powerless and inhuman

Question 15

How did Rosenhan follow up his research?

Answer 15

• carried out research where student asked for help on university campus and in every case received it
• told hospitals he was sending pseudopatients and medical staff had to rate how likely they were a pseudopatient

Question 16

What were the follow up results to the further research?

Answer 16

• 192 patients seen
• none were pseudopatients
• but 41 patients were rated a likely to be pseudopatients
• by one or more staff

Question 17

What were the conclusions to rosenhan?

Answer 17

• ability to diagnose mental disorders is limited
• once diagnosed, people are forever labelled

Question 18

What are the strengths to Rosenhan?

Answer 18

• qualitative and quantitative data creates concurrent validity
• reliable due to the controls
• consistant sample creates consistant data

Question 19

What are the weaknesses to Rosenhan?

Answer 19

• Validity is questionable due to lack of controls
• eg experience and education of professionals may differ

Question 20

What are biological explanations for mental disorders?

Answer 20

• based on neurotransmitters and hormones and how they affect our behaviour

Question 21

How is depression and seretonin linked?

Answer 21

• drugs for serotonin have shown to decrease symptoms of depression

Question 22

How do genetic links affect mental illness?

Answer 22

• children can inherit mental illness from parents due to genetics

Question 23

How does brain structure affect mental illness?

Answer 23

• differences in pre-frontal cortex in twins
• difference in brain and ventricle sizes

Question 24

What are the four biochemical explanations?

Answer 24

• brain structure
• genetic links
• cell function
• neurochemistry

Question 25

What is the aim to Gottesman 2010?

Answer 25

• aimed to understand what genetic influences there are for developing schizophrenia by studying children whose parents had the disorder.

Question 26

What was the setting for Gottesman?

Answer 26

• Data publicly available from denamrk
• looked at children whose parents had a mental illness

Question 27

Describe the participants in Gottesman?

Answer 27

• families where the parent s were admitted to psychiatric hospital for schizophrenia, bipolar or unipolar
• compared to a control group of general population and parents who had not been to a psychiatric hospital
• children were followed up to see if they had been admitted to a mental hospital

Question 28

What were the results to gottesman?

Answer 28

• both parents , 27% child had same disorder
• both parents, 39% child had schizophrenia
• single parent, 7% child had same disorder
• 0 parents, 1% child had mental illness

Question 29

What does gottesman conclude?

Answer 29

• genetic link for schizophrenia with both parents increased
• single parent chances decreased

Question 30

What were the strengths to Gottesman?

Answer 30

• genetic links is applicable to all humans
• controls created more validity
• sample was very large
• results were easy to obtain

Question 31

What were the weaknesses of the Gottesman?

Answer 31

• secondary data reduced control and internal validity
• reliability was compromised

Question 32

What is behaviourist explanations?

Answer 32

• suggests that we are a product of our experiences, and all behaviour is learned and so can be unlearned.

Question 33

What are the cognitive explanations?

Answer 33

• suggests that psychological disorders are a result of faulty thinking, and these patterns can lead to reinforced cycles of cognition.

Question 34

What did beck propose to the cognitive theory?

Answer 34

• believed that a person with depression believes that:
• they are worthless
• that they are failures
• there is no hope for future

Question 35

What are psychodynamic explanations?

Answer 35

• how situations as we grow and develop can alter how we behave
• freud

Question 36

What is the Cognitive Neuroscience explanation?

Answer 36

• combines biological and cognitive explanations

Question 37

What does Szasz suggest?

Answer 37

• suggest that there is an over-medicalisation of disorders and drug companies are trying to profit off of people.
• suggests that it is impossible to diagnose mental illness as there are no tools that are proven to be accurate

Question 38

What was the myth of mental illness?

Answer 38

• a paper szaz wrote

Question 39

What were the strengths to Szasz?

Answer 39

• examples to change ICD and DSM

Question 40

What are the weaknesses to Szaz?

Answer 40

• not valid as there is no evidence