Psychopathology Flashcards
What are the four definitions of Abnormality?
Statistical Infrequency
Deviation from social norms
Failure to function adequately
Deviation from ideal mental health
What is statistical infrequency?
Numerically unusual or less common behaviour/ characteristic compared to population.
What is deviation from social norms?
Behaviour that is different from the collectively accepted standards of ‘normal’ behaviour in the community/society.
What is failure to function?
Someone becomes abnormal when they are unable to cope with the demands of day to day living. It is decided that someone cannot function adequately when they are incapable of maintaining basic standards of nutrition and hygiene or relationships and jobs.
What is deviation from ideal mental health?
Defining abnormality by whether or not the person meets a set criteria for good mental health. Shows the people who deviate from this ideal.
E.g. Cope with stress, independent, successfully work,love and enjoy.
Define phobias.
An object or situation that causes an irrational fear and anxiety when exposed to it.
Outline the Behavioural characteristics of phobias.
Panic- This may be crying, screaming or running away. Some may freeze or cling on or have a tantrum.
Avoidance- going out of their way to avoid the phobic stimulus disrupting and making their daily life harder.
Endurance- instead of avoiding they stay in the presence of the phobia but continue to have high levels of anxiety.
Outline the emotional characteristics of phobias.
Anxiety- unpleasant state of high arousal preventing the sufferer from relaxing and experience positive emotions.
However fear is the immediate response when actually seeing the phobic stimulus.
Emotional responses are unreasonable and the sufferer blows the actual danger out of proportion.
Outline cognitive characteristics of phobias.
Attentive to the phobic stimulus- hard to look away or concentrate on anything else.
Irrational beliefs- increasing the pressure for the sufferer to perform well in social situations.
Cognitive distortions- may see the phobic stimulus on a highly negative or unusual way. Buttons are disgusting etc.
What is Systematic desensitisation?
It is a behavioural therapy designed to gradually reduce phobic anxiety through classical conditioning. This is counter conditioning as the sufferer is taught to relax at each stage of the anxiety hierarchy and finally exposing to the phobia in a relaxed state.
What is another behavioural approach to treating phobias?
Flooding where the patient is immediately exposed to an extreme form of their phobia.
It is effective as there is avoidance option so the patient quickly learns the phobic stimulus is harmless also they may get exhausted by their own fear response.
Behavioural characteristics of depression
Reduced levels of activity due to loss of energy.
This leads to withdrawing from work,social life.
Disruption to sleep and eating
Aggression / self harm
Extremely irritable and easy to provoke violence.
Emotional characteristics of depression
Lowered mood
Anger
Low self esteem
Cognitive characteristics of depression
Poor concentration
Pay attention to the negative aspects and ignore the positives
Absolutist thinking where everything is black and white therefore a bad situation is always viewed as a complete disaster.
