Psychopathology Flashcards
Abnormality
- Failure to function adequately ex. Avoiding eye contact, personal distress, irrational/dangerous behaviour
- Deviation from mental health (see Jahoda’s list)
Abnormality-evaluation
Strengths:
-Access of subjective experience of the patient
-Comprehensive as it covers broad criteria for mental health
Weaknesses:
-Deviation from social norms depends on person as they can just choose to behave that way, ex) religion can be seen as irrational
-Judgement made by psychiatrist is subjective
-Jahoda’s list may only apply to individualist culture
-Standards are too high
-Incorrect labelling of people ex) people losing jobs will obvi feel depressed, doesn’t mean they have problems
Phobia-types
Specific phobia-of an object/situation
Social phobia-of a social situation
Agoraphobia-of being outside/in public
Phobias-behavioural
- Panic in response of phobic stimulus (crying, screaming, freezing, etc)
- Avoidance-avoid contacting the phobic stimulus (affects daily life)
- Endurance-person remains within phobic stimulus but experiences anxiety
Phobias-emotional
Anxiety (unpleasant state of high arousal)-evoke negativity, fear, long term, unreasonable
ex. arachnophobia (spiders)-anxiety increase in places linked to spiders (such as zoo), fear increase when encountering it
Phobias-cognitive
- Selective attention to stimulus
-person finds it difficult to look away from stimulus (helps reacting quickly to the threat) - irrational beliefs
ex. social phobias can involve thoughts ‘I must always be smart’-increase pressure - Cognitive distortions
-Person’s perception of the stimulus is distorted (sees random things as ugly/disgusting)
Depression-behavioural
- Activity levels
Most have reduced level of energy and are lethargic
Psychomotor agitation-individuals struggle to relax (opposite effect) - Disruption to sleep and eating
Reduced/Increased levels (insomnia/hypersomnia) - Aggression and self harm
-verbal/physical aggression directed to others/self
Depression-emotional
- Lowered mood-lethargic and sad
- Anger-extreme, directed to self/others, can lead to aggression
- Lowered self esteem (like themselves less than usual)-self loathing (hating themselves)
Depression-cognitive
- Poor concentration-difficulty in task, decision making
- Attending to and dwelling on the negative-pay attention to the negatives, recall sad events
- Absolutist thinking (black and white)-see bad situation as an absolute disaster
OCD-behavioural
- Repetitive compulsion-repeat behaviours such as hand washing
- Compulsion reduce anxiety-10% show compulsion alone not other symptoms-responding to obsessive thought reduce anxiety
- Avoidance-Avoiding situation that trigger anxiety such as emptying bins
OCD-emotional
- Anxiety and distress-distress from obsessions, anxiety from compulsion
- Accompanying depression-low mood (compulsion bring relief but temporary)
- Guilt and disgust
OCD-cognitive
- Obsessive thoughts (recur over and over again)
- Cognitive strategies to deal with obsessions-people adopt coping strategies to manage anxiety, can seem abnormal to others
- Insight into excessive anxiety-aware that their obsession is irrational, thinks about what happens if their anxiety are justified (hypervigilant-alert)
Two process model
- Classical conditioning
-Baby called Albert had no anxiety, shown a rat but every time rat was near they made a frightening sound. Noise (UCS) created fear (UCR), so rat (NS) was associated with UCR and became CS to produce CR
-generalised to similar objects such as rabbit - Operant conditioning
-Happens when behaviour is reinforced (rewarded) or punished (positive/negative reinforcement)
-Avoidance results in desirable consequence-repeated
Two process model-evaluation
Strengths:
-Application to therapy as it explained how it was maintained
Weaknesses:
-Some avoidance happens by positive feelings of safety, avoidance is to stick with safety factor
-Evolutionary factors may play a part, phobic stimulus is dangerous and avoidance is adaptive (biological preparedness-innate predisposition to acquire fears)
-Some phobias are not followed by a trauma
-Doesn’t explain cognitive aspect of phobia
Systematic desensitisation
Behavioural therapy to reduce anxiety through classical conditioning and counterconditioning (learning different response), reciprocal inhibition (can’t feel multiple emotions at once)
- Anxiety hierarchy-list of situations related to phobic stimulus, least to most
- Relaxation-patient encouraged to relax/mental imagery techniques/drugs such as valium
- Exposure-exposed to stimulus in a relaxed state, encouraged to maintain relaxed