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AS Psychology > Psychopathology > Flashcards

Psychopathology Flashcards

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1
Q

Statistical infrequency

Strength
Weakness

A

Behaviour that is statistically infrequent/rarely seen in the general population.

S: objective, less open to influence of clinical judgements
W: doesn’t distinguish rare characteristics between desirable and undesirable.

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2
Q

Deviation from social norms

Strength
Weakness

A

Behaviour that is seen as socially unacceptable or undesirable within society.

S: can protect society from behaviour that is unacceptable and offensive.
W: can result in a form of social control and even persecution.

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3
Q

Failure to function adequately

Strength
Weakness

A

Behaviour that means the person is unable to engage or cope with the activities in normal day to day life.

S: most people seek treatment when day to day life is affected, so good face validity.
W: many people with mental disorders still function normally.

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4
Q

Deviation from ideal mental health

Strength
Weakness

A

When someone does not meet a set of criteria for mental well being.

E.g. Unable to make their own decisions or having low self esteem.

S: 6 criteria outline what individuals should aim for in terms of maximising mental well being.
W: criteria is over demanding, it would categorise most as mentally ill.

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5
Q

6 criteria for ideal mental health

By Marie Jahoda (1958)

A
  1. Positive attitudes towards yourself
  2. Accurate perception of reality
  3. Resistance to stress
  4. Autonomy
  5. Mastery of environment
  6. Self actualisation (achieving potential)

If don’t meet all 6, you’re classed as mentally ill.

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6
Q

Phobia

A

A persistent, intense and irrational fear of certain situations or objects.
The fear is put of proportion to the danger posed and causes distress and or interferes with the person’s day to day life.

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7
Q

3 types of phobia

A
  • Specific: phobias of specific objects (spiders) or situations (flying).
  • Social: fear of embarrassment or humiliation in a public or social situation.
  • Agoraphobia: a persistent fear of certain environments, often either due to their crowdedness or openness, disproportional to the threat or danger posed by the environment.
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8
Q

Emotional symptoms of phobia

A
  • Experience intense fear or feelings of panic. Fear is excessive and out of proportion to danger posed.
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9
Q

Behavioural symptoms of phobia

A
  • Person go to great lengths to avoid phobic situation to escape from it asap.
  • If can’t be avoided behavioural signs will become seen (shaking, crying).
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10
Q

Cognitive symptoms of phobia

A
  • Show distorted thinking about phobic stimulus.

- Person is aware that their fear is irrational (not suffering from a delusional disorder).

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11
Q

Major depression

Unipolar

A
  • Depressed mood for most or all of day.
  • Diminished interest in or pleasure in activities.
  • Must experience at least 5 key symptoms everyday for at least two weeks before a diagnosis of depression would be considered.
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12
Q

Emotional symptoms of depression

A
  • Low mood or hopelessness, feel tearful, numb, empty

- Irritability, when depressed more angry and irritable than normal.

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13
Q

Behavioural symptoms of depression

A
  • Lack of energy
  • Sleep problems
  • Changes in appetite
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14
Q

Cognitive symptoms of depression

A
  • Distorted, negative thinking (nothing will work out, I am unloveable).
  • Thoughts of death (death would be a release, suicidal thoughts).
  • Poor concentration and poor memory.
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15
Q

Bipolar depression

A
  • Person experiences periods of depressed moods, but also have periods of mania (show excessively high or elated mood)
  • Delusions (believe you have superpowers)
  • Risk taking behaviours
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16
Q

OCD

A

Anxiety disorder
Person experiences persistent intrusive thoughts that they find very unpleasant and upsetting (obsessions).
Thoughts are about topics person finds repugnant.
Person may have uncontrollable urges to engage in behaviours (compulsions) to try and stop the thoughts and or to prevent the feared event.
Knows its irrational but still suffers from severe distress and day to day functioning is severely affected.

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17
Q

Defining abnormalities

A
  • Statistical infrequency
  • Deviation from social norms
  • Failure to function adequately
  • Deviation from ideal mental health
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18
Q

Emotional symptoms of OCD

A
  • Increased anxiety or feelings of panic when the intrusive thoughts occur or if prevented from carrying out the compulsive behaviours.
  • Person feels guilt and disgust at the thoughts that they are having.
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19
Q

Behavioural symptoms of OCD

A
  • The time spent of compulsive behaviours can have a serious effect on the person’s ability to maintain social relationships.
  • Avoidance: person may go to great lengths to avoid things that may trigger their obsessional thinking (public toilets).
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20
Q

Cognitive symptoms of OCD

A
  • Repetitive and intrusive thoughts.

- Realisation that the thoughts are irrational and are self-generated.

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21
Q

Compulsions on their own

A

Some people can experience the compulsive behaviours without the obsessions but that is less common.

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22
Q

3 treatments (the behavioural approach) to phobias

A
  • The two process model (classical and operant conditioning).
  • Systematic desensitisation (relaxation and use of hierarchy).
  • Flooding.
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23
Q

What does the behavioural approach to phobias argue

A

That phobias the fear and avoidance behaviours in phobias are learned as a result of frightening experiences.

Also that phobias can be unlearned through behavioural therapies.

24
Q

Mowrer’s two process model

1947

A
  1. ASSOCIATING the phobic object with fear due to a frightening experience. The process involves CLASSICAL CONDITIONING.
  2. The person learns to avoid or escape from the phobic object as their fear reduces whenever they get away from the object. This involves OPERANT CONDITIONING. This reduction in fear REINFORCES their avoidance of the object.
25
Q

Classical and operant conditioning process of phobias

A 
1. Classical Conditioning
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)= choking -> Unconditioned response (UCR) = fear. 
Conditioned stimulus (CS)= button -> CR = fear.
  1. Button -> fear -> avoids all buttons -> fear reduces -> avoidance: negative reinforcement.

Avoidance maintains the phobia as not exposed to it so the fear is not extinguished.

26
Q

Generalisation of phobia

A

When the fear starts to generalise to other objects or situations similar to the one that created the fear.

E.g. Original fear of buttons generalises to peas, beans, coins.

27
Q

Observational (social) learning theory of phobias

A

People may learn to be afraid by indirectly witnessing someone else experiencing intense fear.

Called vicarious learning.

28
Q

Evidence supporting the role of classical conditioning in phobias

A

Watson and Rayner (1920)
Little Albert, 11 months old.
White rat presented, played happily.
Ten every time rat appeared, scared Albert with loud noise, then learned to fear the rat.
Some evidence showed generalisation to other furry animals.
Unethical: was not “deconditioned”
Now thought Albert not easy to condition and they needed to “top up” conditioning to maintain the fear.

29
Q

Evidence for observational learning of fear

A

Bandura and Rosenthal 1966.
Partcipants watched another person (confederate) get hooked up to an electrical lab apparatus. When a buzzer sounded confederate acted as if he was shocked.
After a few times participant showed signs of fear when buzzer sounded, even though didn’t receive shocks themselves.
Supports vicarious learning.

30
Q

Strengths of the behavioural approach to phobias

A
  • Lots of supporting evidence for the role of conditioning of fear in humans and other animals from a range of studies. Increases reliability and validity of the theory.
  • Impact on treatment. Exposure treatments have strong evidence for effectiveness from controlled trials.
  • High face validity as many people with phobias recall a frightening experience.
31
Q

Weaknesses of the behavioural approach to phobias

A
  • Many have frightening events and don’t acquire a phobia. Theory doesn’t explain this.
  • Some people with phobias cannot recall a frightening experience.
  • Doesn’t take into account our cognitive thoughts. Some acquire phobias as they develop distorted beliefs.
  • Can’t explain why some phobias are more common than others.
32
Q

Cook and Mineka 1989

Suggests humans and other animals are biologically prepared to fear objects that were dangerous to our ancestors.

A

Wild monkeys show fear to snakes. But lab monkeys don’t automatically. Siggesting monkeys are not innately scared of snakes.
Monkeys showed picture of snake + video of scared mother. Same with toy rabbit.
Monkeys learned to be scared of snakes but not of toy rabbit.
Suggests monkeys were biologically prepared to be scared of snakes but not rabbits.

33
Q

Systematic desensitisation

Wolpe 1958

A
  1. Patient trained in deep muscle relaxation.
  2. Patient and therapist draw up a fear hierarchy.
  3. Patient gets into relaxed state.
  4. Patient asked to imagine first step in hierarchy until they feel no more fear.
  5. Move to next step on hierarchy and then to real life exposure.
  6. Patient usually given homework assignments to do between sessions.

Gradual exposure most important. Not relaxed state.

34
Q

Evidence for Effectiveness of systematic desensitisation

A

GILROY 2000
45 patients. Three treatment groups: computer aided vicarious exposure, therapist live exposure, relaxation placebo.
Symptom severity measure pre, post and 3 month after treatment. Questionnaires.
Computer was effective, so was live. Both more effective than placebo.
42/45 patients followed up 33 months later. Improvements made after 3 months maintained almost 3 years later.

35
Q

Appropriateness of systematic desensitisation

A

+ acceptable to patients
+ easier to explain
- time consuming

36
Q

Flooding

A

Going to the top of someones fear hierarchy and exposing them to that thing that they are most afraid of for a prolonged period of time.

37
Q

Evidence for effectiveness for flooding

A
  • Wolpe 1960: girl scared of driving, went driving for 4 hours until anxiety reduced and over phobia.
  • Teasdale 1977: looked at evidence and found results mixed so decided need to be exposed to fear for at least over 30 minutes.
38
Q

Appropriateness of flooding

A

+ Rapid and effective treatment for those willing to do it.

  • ethical issues: very distressing. Only okay for those that give fully informed consent.
  • Not good for those with social phobias where they have distorted beliefs of what other people are thinking about them. Better in this case to use cognitive therapy.
39
Q

The cognitive explanation of depression

A

Depression occurs due to maladaptive/faulty thinking and distorted/irrational beliefs.

Therefore, it argues depression can be treated by identifying, challenging and changing their negative thinking patterns.

40
Q

Ellis’s Cognitive approach 1960

ABC Model

A

A: adverse event (failing an exam).
B: beliefs (I am stupid, I’ll never get a good job).
C: consequences (depressed feeling).

41
Q

Beck’s Cognitive Approach

A

Negative Schema
Cognitive Errors
Biased Memories

42
Q

Beck’s Negative Schema

A

The cognitive triad (for explaining negative schema):
Self (I am worthless).
World (No one can be trusted).
Future (It is hopeless).

43
Q

Beck’s Cognitive Errors

A
  • Catastrophising (assume worst will happen).
  • Applying a negative filter (ignores positive).
  • Misinterpreting positive events in a negative way
44
Q

Beck’s Biased Memories

A

In depression people’s memory often becomes biased to remembering negative events from their lives and they find it difficult to recall positive events.
This makes their mood even worse and the person becomes trapped in a vicious cycle.

45
Q

Evaluation of the cognitive explanation

A

+ Lots of evidence supporting as the approach has hypotheses that can be scientifically tested.
+ Led to a therapy for depression (cognitive behaviour therapy).
- Sometimes negative thinking is not irrational.
- May not provide a full explanation as we need to take into account the biological factors.

46
Q

Evidence for memory biases

A

CLARK AND TEASDALE 1985
Patients with worse depressed mood in morning remembered more bad memories than in evening.
Depressed mood causes biased memories.
Supports view emotion linked to how we think.

47
Q

Evidence that negative thinking increases vulnerability to depression

A

LEWINSOHN 2001
Longitudinal study: negative attitudes in adolescents. None depressed at start. But one year later, assessed whether suffering from depression and whether they had unpleasant life events. Those with bad events + negative attitudes were more likely to suffer from depression. Supports Beck’s negative schema.

48
Q

Biological Factors for having depression

Evidence

A

McGuffin 1996:
Concordance rate for identical twins (MZ) was 46% but non-identical (DZ) was 20%.
MZ suggests genes play a part. But as its not 100% its clear environmental factors also play a part in determining whether or not someone will get depression.

49
Q

Cognitive behaviour therapy

A

Aim to change dysfunctional thinking.
Focuses on current problems and not from childhood.
Lasts between 5 and 20 sessions.
Patient and therapist together to identify and challenge distorted thinking and problem behaviours.

50
Q

2 steps of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

A
  1. Identify the distorted thinking.

2. Challenge the distorted thinking.

51
Q

How to identify the distorted thinking in CBT

A
  • Using a thought diary.
    Write down when particularly depressed then write down what happened just before and the thoughts they had at that time. Then therapist and patient can see what type of automatic negative thoughts they’re having and the type of thinking errors made.
52
Q

How to challenge the distorted thinking in CBT

A
  • Socratic questioning: asking questions that make the patient realise that their thinking is distorted and maladaptive.
  • Collaborative empiricism: patients encouraged to view beliefs as hypotheses to be tested by gathering evidence. So therapist and patient work together to test beliefs in empirical (scientific) way.
53
Q

Evidence for effectiveness of CBT for depression

APPLEBY 1997

A

Aim: compare effectiveness of CBT with anti-depressant medication in women suffering post natal depression.
Method: 87 women in Manchester allocated 1 of 3: antidepressants, CBT, drug placebo. Each treatment 12 weeks. Double-blind.
Results: both more effective than placebo. CBT just as effective as medicine.
+ NHS setting, good ecological validity.
- No follow up to see for relapse.

54
Q

Evidence for effectiveness of CBT for depression

HOLLON ET AL 2005

A

Aim: investigate long term effects of CBT compared to medication
Method: 104 patients responded well to CBT or meds were followed up over 12 months. Rates of relapse (return of symptoms of depression for at least 2 weeks) monitored.
Results: after CBT 30%, after meds. 70%.

55
Q

Appropriateness of CBT

A

+ Straightforward and acceptable to many patients.
+ Time limited, appeals to many as not as time consuming as other therapies.
- More expensive for NHS to deliver than medication as requires a trained specialist.
+ CBT good at preventing relapse. Medication is a ‘quick fix’.
- Some have realistically difficult lives so can’t change their way of thinking.
- May not be suitable for those with poor communication skills.
- May not be suitable for those with severe depression and not motivated. May need medication to raise motivation to engage in process of CBT.
- Some patients may think they are to blame due to being irrational so must be careful when explaining therapy.

AS Psychology (6 decks)

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