Psychopathologies - PAPER 1 Flashcards
What are the four definitions of abnormality
– Statistical infrequency
– deviation from social norms
– failure to function adequately
– deviation from ideal mental health
Outline the statistical infrequency definition of abnormality
– When someone displays uncommon characteristics
– Characteristics that deviates from what statistics show is common (they are rare)
– For example, most people have an IQ around 100, but not many have an IQ below 70. This would be considered an abnormality as deviates from what is statistically common.
EVALUATION
– Real life application – intellectual disability disorder is diagnosed using statistical deviation and looking at IQ
– not or statistical deviations are bad. E.g. IQ over 130. We don’t consider them to be psychopathologies.
Outline the deviation from social norms definition of abnormality
– Social norms are the normal ways to interact in each culture
– therefore if someone deviate from the station or is it indicates abnormality
– social norms can be explicit (e.g. laws) or implicit (e.g. queueing behaviour, hygiene, politeness, wearing clothes)
– It is going against what a group of people deemed to be acceptable
– antisocial personality disorder is diagnosed based on this definition
EVALUATION
– Real life application – diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder
– norms vary over time
– their culture and situation dependence e.g. hearing voices may be classed as abnormal in one culture but not another
– can lead to human rights abuses as it makes it easy to control minority groups

Outline the failure to function adequately definition of abnormality
– Society has set an idea of how someone should be able to live their life
– people who are unable to cope with the demands of every day life are classed as abnormal
– e.g. a person suffering from OCD is only be bought to have healthy eating habits because they fear germs too much
– Psychologist suggest character wrist sticks that define failure to function adequately include not conforming to interpersonal roles, personal distress, irrational or dangerous behaviour.
EVALUATION
– Context is needed – based jumpers take part in a sport that has a high mortality rate
– it is culturally relative
– It is a threshold for help as treatment can be targeted to those who need it most
Outline the deviation from ideal mental health definition of abnormality
– This definition focuses on defining ideal mental health
– anything that deviates from this can then be classed as abnormal
– Jahoda Suggested certain criteria you need to meet to be normal: positive attitudes towards yourself, self actualisation, cope with stress, personal autonomy, accurate perception of reality
EVALUATION
– Jahoda’s characteristics are culturally biased – individualist culture
– Very few people have an ideal mental state, therefore the majority of people should be classed as abnormal
Dash how far do we need to deviate from that ideal mental health before we are classed as abnormal?
Outline the general evaluation of defining abnormality
– If someone is labelled as having an abnormality it may have repercussions in the future – e.g. saying someone is unable to cope with daily life might affect job prospects in the future
– Rosenhan Study: 816 participants were admitted to hospitals in the US after complaining of hearing voices. Once they’ve been admitted they acted normally. This shows how difficult it is to diagnose abnormalities.
Define the different symptoms of phobias
– Behavioural symptoms – refer to the way people act
– emotional symptoms – refer to the way people feel
– cognitive symptoms – refer to the ways people think or process information
Describe the way that the behavioural approach explains phobias
– There are three categories of phobias: specific phobia (e.g spiders) , social phobia, agoraphobia (crowded places)
TWO PROCESS THEORY (Mowrer)
–  phobias are acquired through learning.
– Phobias are acquired initially by classical conditioning (learning by association). If an unpleasant emotion is paired with a stimulus, then the two become associated with each other through conditioning. For example, a child being knocked over by a dog associates the unpleasantness of falling over with dogs.
– Phobias are maintained through operant conditioning (learning through rewards/punishments)- the person avoids the phobic stimulus, and gains a reward for doing so. For example, constantly avoiding situations involving dogs. This maintains the phobia because the feared association is never ‘unlearned’.
EVALUATION
– Little Albert - a phobia was created in Little Albert who was nine months old. Albert showed no fear of a rat before the experiment. Then every time he was presented with a rat there was a loud noise (banging an iron bar) next to his ear. After the experiment he was afraid of rats, he even generalised his phobia to similar things: a rabbit, a fur coat.
– Many people develop phobias of things they have not had a fearful account of, so they can’t have been conditioned
– evolutionary explanations of phobias – more people fear snakes (Dangerous in our evolutionary past) than cars (dangerous now)
– Real world application – exposure in therapy
What are the two behavioural therapies
– Systematic desensitisation
– flooding
Describe systematic desensitisation as a behavioural therapy
– This uses counterconditioning
– the fear response is replaced with an alternative and harmless response:
- Patients are asked to list situations from the least to most fearful – anxiety hierarchy
- Patients are taught relaxation techniques
- Exposure – occurs across many sessions : Patience visualise the least fear for situation and perform their relaxation techniques simultaneously. Once patients are comfortable visualising the first stage they move up through the list. Eventually the patient can cope with the most fearful situation.
STUDY (Gilroy et al)
– 42 patients who had been treated for arachnophobia with systematic desensitisation
– Compared to a control group who are treated with a relaxation techniques
– three months and 33 months later the experimental group showed less fear

Describe flooding as a behavioural therapy
– Aim is to remove the association between the stimulus and response as patients are exposed to the third object or situation until the fear response disappears
– high levels of fear and anxiety cannot be sustained
– the patient learns of the stimulus is harmless
– extinction – A learned response (fear) is extinguished
– This means the conditioned stimulus no longer produces the conditioned response
– patient cannot leave otherwise reinforcement from this would make it worse
EVALUATION
– Ethical issues – flooding is unpleasant where is systematic desensitisation is a slower process
– flooding is one session so is often cheaper than systematic desensitisation
-flooding is not suitable for all phobias as some phobias are dangerous
Describe the characteristics of depression
BEHAVIOURAL CHARACTERISTICS
– Reduce level of activity or sometimes increased – e.g. struggling to relax, pacing
– struggle to sleep or too much sleep
– appetite is increased or decrease drastically
EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
– Diagnosis must include the presence of sadness or loss of interest in normal activities
– sadness – more extreme and generally feeling sad, includes feelings of worthlessness
– low self-esteem – people with depression like themselves less than before
– anger – can you direct to the others or the south, can result in self harm (behavioural characteristic)
COGNITIVE CHARACTERISTICS
– Negative thoughts – negative view of the world
– poor concentration – struggle to stick at a task or make decisions
– black and white thinking – thinking situations are all good or all bad
Describe the cognitive approach in terms of depression
ELLIS’ ABC MODEL
A- An activating event which is negative and external
B- The belief – can be irrational or rational and is the main part as it is our cognition
C- The consequence – this can be healthy or unhealthy and emotional or behavioural
Our beliefs are affected by three things:
– Musturbation – Thinking that certain ideas must be true for an individual to be happy
– I can’t stand it -itis – Feeling overwhelmed if something goes wrong, believing it is a disaster
– utopianism – believe in the world should always be fair and the inability to accept things going wrong
BECKS COGNITIVE THEORY OF DEPRESSION
Faulty information processing:
– Focusing on the negative aspects
– Maximising small problems
Negative self schemas:
– a package of information about ourselves based on experience
– if it’s negative we interpret everything about ourselves as negative
Becks negative triad:
People suffering from depression experience three types of faulty, negative thoughts: Self, World and Future
Cohen et al study (depression and the cognitive approach)
– Longitudinal study over three years of 500 adolescences
– self report and interviews with adolescent and caregiver
– Measuring cognitive vulnerability and depressive episodes
– cognitive vulnerability was a good predictor of later depression
– this could allow psychologist to screen people and target help to those most at risk
General evaluation for the cognitive approach and depression
– ABC model only applies to depression that follow is an activating event – not all depression does. It only applies to reactive depression, not endogenous depression and many cases of depression can’t be traced to a life event.
– Blames the client for the thoughts – gives the client power – but may be unfair
– Has practical application – CBT alters the kind of conditions cognitions which make people vulnerable to depression – make them more resilient to negative life events
– does not explain the cause of the faulty cognitions – doesn’t explain extreme anger, hallucinations or delusions seen in depression
Biological treatments for OCD
Soomro et al study (biological treatments for OCD)
