Psychological Disorders Flashcards
(90 cards)
What is psychopathology?
Problematic patterns of thought, feeling, and Behaviour - literally mean sickness of the mind.
What is labelling theory
labelling those that don’t fit to cultural norms
What is mental health?
A state of emotional wellbeing
What are mental health problems?
The range of emotional and behavioral difficulties people experience through their lives.
What is a mental disorder?
A clinically recognisable set of symptoms and behaviours which usually need treatment
What is neurosis?
issues in living that invoke anxiety or interpersonal conflict - develop with environmental causes
What are personality disorders?
chronic and severe disturbances that alter the capacity to work and to love - develop in childhood - possible genetic vulnerability
What is psychosis?
marked disturbances with contact with reality - genetic origins with environmental experiences
What is aetiology?
origins of psychological disorders and or physiological disturbances
What are the three questions that comprise psychodynamic formulation?
- What does the person desire and fear (relates to dominant motives and conflicts)
- What resources both internal and external does the person have (relates ti ego functioning)
- How does the person experience themselves and others (relates to object relations)
What is ego functioning?
The ability to think clearly, make decisions, and regulate impulses and emotions
What is object relations?
The ability to have meaningful relationships with others and maintain healthy self esteem
How do behavioural and cognitive approaches conceptualise psychopathology?
Understanding of classical and operant conditioning with a cognitive-social perspective.
What is classical conditioning?
neutral stimulus elicits a response after it is paired with a stimulus that automatically elicits a response - We identify a relationship between two stimuli.
What is operant conditioning?
law of effect - learning to operate the environment to produce a response -learning results when an organism associates a response that occurs spontaneously with a particular environmental effect
What is the Cognitive in the Cognitive Behavioral perspective?
Distortions reflect dysfunctional attitude, beliefs and cognitive processes
What is the Behavioral in the Cognitive Behavioral perspective?
Psychological problems arise from conditioned emotional responses
How does the biological approach conceptualise mental disorders?
Neurotransmitter dysfunction
Abnormality of brain structure
Disrupted neural pathway
Genetics
How do psychologists with a systems approach view psychopathology?
Seeks the roots of abnormality in the context of the social group (and families)
What are family homeostatic mechanisms?
the methods used to maintain balance of equilibrium in the family.
How would psychopathology be explained by evolutionary psychologists?
Random variations in genotypes lead to less adaptive phenotypes - interplay between genes and the environment - a random variation that can be weeded out by natural selection - the maladaptive environment
What does the current diagnostic system assume?
That we can distinguish normal from abnormal
How is abnormality reflected?
In discrete symptoms
What is a syndrome
A group of symptoms that fall into clusters (Syndromes)