Psychological Problems p1 Flashcards
Delusions
Believing something that isn’t true (government are spying on you).
Negative and Positive Factors of Schizophrenia
Negative:
-thoughts or behaviour the individual had before the illness (lowered mood, social withdrawal).
Positive:
-changed behaviour or thoughts (hallucinations/delusions).
Catatonic Behaviour
A group of symptoms that usually involve a lack of movement and communication.
Discrimination
A stigma that has been acted upon (a behavioural issue).
Self-fulfilling prophecy
When someone behaves in a way an assumption about them expects them to behave.
Prevelance
How common something is.
Mental Health as a Continuum
Suggests there are degrees in mental health which we may fluctuate between.
Incidence
Refers to the number of NEW cases.
Stigma
A mark of disgrace with a particular circumstance, quality, or person (a cognitive issue).
Tandoc’s Study sample (depression)
-854 students across four uni courses in journalism from USA were INVITED via email and going to their classes
-736 students actually participated in survey
- 68% (500) female
- 32%(235) male average age 19
-78% (574) white americans
= all used facebook for average 2h
Criticisms of Tandoc’s Study
- reductionist = failed to consider the complex nature of depression, reducing the explanation to an outdated evolutionary view, rather than considering the holistic view that depression can be caused due a wide variety of factors
- social desirability bias = due to self report ,participants could have underplayed their use of social media, level of envy and their experience of depression -> invalid results effecting validity
- culturally biased = well educated journalism students USA -> factors may influence how much facebook is used and how they deal with their feelings
- lack construct validity due to numerical coding = complex behaviour reduced to numbers on a rating scale so may not give a true representation of peoples experiences
- difficult to establish cause and effect = relationship between variables (e.g does facebook use increase envy or does envy draw people to facebook?)
Social Drift Theory (schizophrenia)
Suggests having schizophrenia causes people to become lower class, through disengagement from society which leads to further rejection from society(caught in a downwards spiral, hard to get out).
Daniel et al sample
10 USA schizophrenic patients
- each tested with and without amphetamine (one is placebo)
- given haloperidol 6 weeks prior to stabilize their symptoms
Criticisms of Daniel et al
1) culturally biased
= all from USA and most were white , problematic as schizophrenia rates differ between different ethnicities so ungeneralisable
2) Use of haloperidol to stabilize sample
= could have effected brain activity so becomes an extraneous variable. also harder to establish cause and effect
3) Small sample
- ungeneralisable as not representative
Schizophrenia gender Stats and Symptoms/characteristics
- Equal across genders
- women diagnosed in 30’s
- men diagnosed in 20’s
- 1% prevalence
- Symptoms/characteristics: hallucinations, delusions, catatonic behaviour, disorganised speech