Psychopathology Flashcards
Define abnormailty
Psychologcal condition or behaviour that differs from most people (social norm)
Define depression
Mental disorder that causes people to experince a depressed mood
Statistical norm
Critisicm of abnormality
- Abnormality accounts for frequency of behaviour and not its desirability
- Can’t distguish between rate behaviour that is eccentric and rare behaviour that is psychlogically abnormal
Define abnormality that deviates from social norm
Some people behave in a way different from the social norm and social expectation they are seen as different
Social norm not stasticial
What are the critiscm of abnormality
- Discrimination against people
- Social norm and attitude changes over time
Jahdoa (1958) 6 conditions
Explain abnormality as deviation from mental health
- Positive self attitude
- Personal growth
- ability cope with stress
- being in control of own decisions
- accurate perception of reality
- ability to adapt with changes in environment
What are the critiscm of Jahdoa study on mental health
- Degree to which person meets the critea can change over time
- Subjective standard - difficult to measure things like self esteem
Define phobias
- Phobia are form of anxiety disorder which the emotional response to an often harmless object has become a fear to them
- Irrational fear that is out of proportion
Explain symptons of phobias
- Physical symptons - body response to stress such as hyperventilation and increased hearty rate
- Behavioural symptons - Individual will try to avoid the fear which can impact everday life
- Cognitive symptons - anxiety can decrease concentration and impair person ability to complete complex task
Define OCD
Anxiety disorder that involves compulsive thoughts and compulsive behaviour
Explain symptoms of OCD
- Physical symptons - body responds to stress such as hyperventilation and increase heart rate
- Behavioural sympton - compulsive behaviour such as the urge to carry out a specific behaviour or task
Diagnostic of OCD
- Acknowledge the problem but are scared to overcome
- Suffer from serve anxiety
- Suffer from serve depression
- Experience either obsession or compulsion
Symptons of depression
- Physical symptons - Lack of energy, loss of weight and appetite
- Behavioural symptons - Stops socialising, loeses intertest in daily activties may attempt suicide
- Emotional symptons - Feelings of sadness and despair and absence of feelings
Diagnostic criteria of depression
- extreme sadness
- tearfulness
- depressed moods
- loss of interest in pleasure and activities
Three assumptions behaviour approach makes
- All behaviour is learned
- what has been learned can be unlearned
- abnormal behaviour learned same way as normal
Stimulus (unconditonal)
How can phobia can be learnt through classical conditioning
- Starts from an unconditonal stimulus and this triggers a natural reflex but if another stimilus happens at the same time, when this stimimulus happens again it can elict the fear
- An example a loud noise and this creates fear during this stimulus another one being baloons
What is operant conditioning
Learning through positve and negative reinforcement (Punishments and rewards)
Explain how phobia can be learnt through operant conditioning
- Actions are either rewarded (positive reinforcment) or punished (negative reinforcement)
- we will repeat the behaviour if the outcome is good but not if the outcome is not
- If someone has a phobia they are scared of something so to keep their anxiety and stress levels down they will avoid it and that postively reinforces
Dogs, albert
Give an example of Classical conditioning
- Pavlov dogs - learned to associate food with a ringing of a bell
- Little Albert - Learn to associate a white rate with loud noises
Watching others, Bandura
Explain social learning theory and give an example of a research
- We learn certain behaviour by observing others and copying them
- Bandura Bobo doll
- Mineka et al (1994) monkey video
Operant and classic conditioning
Explain how we learn and maintain phobias with the two process model
- Learning and maintance involves classical and operant conditioning
- Classical conditoning - fear is learnt by association
- Operant conditoning - Avoiding the fear (explains why phobia persist)
Classical conditioning
How can you treat phobias using the behaviourist approach
To unlearn the abnormal behaviour the treatment will be based on classical conditioning, unlearning the inappropiate behaviour and replacing it with new behaviour
define desensitisation
Overconumpstion in violent media reuces emotional impact on violence because people become ‘used’ to it
define systematic desensitisation
A person with a phobia is slowly reintroduced to the fear
How does systematic desensitisation work
- Person phobia broken down into small parts
- patient taught to relax and made to create a fear hierarchy
- starting with the stimuli that creates the less fear and building it up with the muslce relaxation techniques
What does the systematic desensitation consist of
- Construction of the hierarchy
- Relaxation trainining
- Graded exposure (imagination)
- pratice in real life
Explain the critiscm of the behavioural approach
- Seen as dehumanising as it reduces humans to programmed stimulus and responses
systematic desentisation
What did McGrath et al (1990) find
70% of his P’s found improvment BUT few patients were completely free of anxiety
How does the cognitive approach explain depression
Assumes the human mind is like a processor and people can control how they select information and store it
Explain beck (1967) cognitive triad
- Negative view about the world
- Negative view about the future
- Negative view about self
Explain Ellis ABC model (1962)
A - Activating agent (example getting a B in an exam)
B - Belief (can be rational or non rational)
C - Consequence (can be healthy or unhealthy)
Schemas
Explain how Beck explains depressioon
Beck believes patients cause of negative thinking is through the negative triad, negative schemas and cognitive biases
How does most cognitive therapy work
- Getting patients to recognist irrational thoughts
- Agreeing on a more realistic approach
- Putting this into pratice via a real life situation
Define cognitive behaviour therapy and the assumptions
- Recognises importance of changing both behaviour and thinking
- Thoughts, behaviour and feeling all influence eachother
- role of therapist is to help patients identify irrational thought and change their thoughts (negative bias)
A lot of patients
Butler et al (2006) findings
studied 10000 patients and found CBT was effective in treating depression (better then anti depressants)
reductionism
Explain critiscm of CBT
- Approach states people are responsible for their psychological problems and could lead to people being blamed for abnormalities
- Approach is reductionist as it ingnores biologial causes such as genetics
How does serotonin link to agressive behaviour
Low level of serotonin can be linked to a agressive behaviour (serotoin regulates mood)
What is beta blockers
Drugs that act on the sympathetic nervous system rather than the brain to reduce heart rate and blood pressure reduce the effects of stress
Immunity
Why can cortisol damage health
Cortisol is a stress hormone and it damages health as raised levels can decrease immune function
Relatives
Findings of Lenane (1990)
Lenane (1990) found that relatives who had OCD 30% of relatives to those also has it
Zohar et al (1996)
Neural explanation for OCD
- OCD can be due to low level of serotonin (nerotransmitters)
- Zohar et al (1996) - found drugs that increase serotonin levels benefited 60% of OCD suffers
What are some drug treatment for OCD
- Beta blockers - act on the automatic nervous system (ANS) to reduce anxiety by reducing heart rate and blood pressure
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibiator (SSRI) - Increase level of serotonin as OCD can be a cause of low level of serotonin
Drug therapy, easy to use and cheap
Advantages of biological approach for treating OCD
- Drug therapy can be used along side CBT
- Easy to use and does not involve patients changing lifestyle
- Cheap compared to other therapy such as CBT
Ethical concerns, not treat (suppress?)
Criticism of Biological approach treating OCD
- Some drugs have unpleasants side effects and can lead to depdency also addiction
- Suppress the symptons and not cure the disorder
