Paper3: Mental Health Flashcards
Who created the 4 definitions of abnormal behaviour?
- Rosenhan and Seligman
What are the four definitions of abnormal behaviour?
- statistical infrequency
- deviation from social norms
- deviation from ideal mental health
- failure to function adequately
Describe statistical infrequency
- high IQ
- musical brilliance
Describe failure to function
- unable to maintain a job, education or hygiene
Describe deviation from social norms
- dressing outlandish
- talking to yourself
Describe deviation from ideal mental health
- lacking positivity
- losing touch with reality
Describe ICD
- covers all illnesses
Describe DSM
- covers psychological disorders
Describe affective disorders
- affects mood
- depression
- bipolar
Describe psychotic disorders
- loses touch with reality
- schizophrenia
Describe anxiety
- generalised anxiety
- phobias
What was the aim of Rosenhan 1973
- test the diagnostic ability of medical professionals in USA
What was the methodof Rosenhan?
- pseudopatients make appointment at outpatient clinic in 12 hospitals
- symptoms of hearing voice saying random words ‘thud’ or ‘hollow’
What were the results to Rosenhan?
- 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
How did Rosenhan follow up his research?
- 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
What were the follow up results to the further research?
- 192 patients seen
- none were pseudopatients
- but 41 patients were rated a likely to be pseudopatients
- by one or more staff
What were the conclusions to rosenhan?
- ability to diagnose mental disorders is limited
- once diagnosed, people are forever labelled
What are the strengths to Rosenhan?
- qualitative and quantitative data creates concurrent validity
- reliable due to the controls
- consistant sample creates consistant data
What are the weaknesses to Rosenhan?
- Validity is questionable due to lack of controls
- eg experience and education of professionals may differ
What are biological explanations for mental disorders?
- based on neurotransmitters and hormones and how they affect our behaviour
How is depression and seretonin linked?
- drugs for serotonin have shown to decrease symptoms of depression
How do genetic links affect mental illness?
- children can inherit mental illness from parents due to genetics
How does brain structure affect mental illness?
- differences in pre-frontal cortex in twins
- difference in brain and ventricle sizes
What are the four biochemical explanations?
- brain structure
- genetic links
- cell function
- neurochemistry
What is the aim to Gottesman 2010?
- aimed to understand what genetic influences there are for developing schizophrenia by studying children whose parents had the disorder.
What was the setting for Gottesman?
- Data publicly available from denamrk
- looked at children whose parents had a mental illness
Describe the participants in Gottesman?
- 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
What were the results to gottesman?
- 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
What does gottesman conclude?
- genetic link for schizophrenia with both parents increased
- single parent chances decreased
What were the strengths to Gottesman?
- genetic links is applicable to all humans
- controls created more validity
- sample was very large
- results were easy to obtain
What were the weaknesses of the Gottesman?
- secondary data reduced control and internal validity
- reliability was compromised
What is behaviourist explanations?
- suggests that we are a product of our experiences, and all behaviour is learned and so can be unlearned.
What are the cognitive explanations?
- suggests that psychological disorders are a result of faulty thinking, and these patterns can lead to reinforced cycles of cognition.
What did beck propose to the cognitive theory?
- believed that a person with depression believes that:
- they are worthless
- that they are failures
- there is no hope for future
What are psychodynamic explanations?
- how situations as we grow and develop can alter how we behave
- freud
What is the Cognitive Neuroscience explanation?
- combines biological and cognitive explanations
What does Szasz suggest?
- 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
What was the myth of mental illness?
- a paper szaz wrote
What were the strengths to Szasz?
- examples to change ICD and DSM
What are the weaknesses to Szaz?
- not valid as there is no evidence
