Psychopathology: What is Abnormal? - Exam Review Flashcards
Clinical psychology
attempts to identify pathological mental processes and behaviour.
How to Distinguish Abnormal from Normal
- ) Deviation from a statistical/cultural norm
- ) Societal disruption/observer discomfort
- ) Emotional distress
- ) Maladaptiveness of behaviour
Deviation from a statistical/cultural norm
- if people normally get sad once a week, but one person gets sad 7 days a week, we would assume this person has depression.
- deviance doesn’t necessarily lead to disturbance, ex: homosexuality.
Societal disruption/Observer discomfort
- whether a person’s behaviour causes societal stress or discomfort.
- fails to distinguish people who have a pathology from people who are revolutionary (ex: MLK).
Emotional Distress & Maladaptiveness of behaviour
- criteria used in DSM to identify mental illness.
- problematic because its hard to find objective standard of impairment.
Mental disorder
syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour.
Category model
- a mental disorder is qualitatively distinct from normal psychological functioning.
- individual either has the disorder or does not.
- ex: Ted Bundy.
Continuum model
- a mental disorder consists of traits that are at an extreme point along a particular dimension.
- an individual has more or less of a certain trait.
Costs of Diagnosis
- ) Expectation Biases
- ) Social Stigma
- ) Potential for mis/over-diagnosis
Rosenhan’s Study
- shows that diagnostic labels distort how other people see a patient.
- labels can also produce self-fulfilling prophecies.
Job Applicant vs Patient Study
- the label of patient changes the way that a therapist interprets an individuals behaviour.
- therapist rated those labelled as “patients” as less well adjusted.
Diagnostic Inflation
- Allen Francis
- argues that the qualification for a disorder is becoming more loose, so more people are being diagnosed.
ex: ADHD
Benefits of Diagnosis
- ) Validation for patient.
- ) Allocation and coordination of resources.
- ) Predicting behaviour of individuals.
Evolution of Abnormal Psych
mental illness thought to arise from being possessed by evil spirits.
treatments included:
1.) torture to make body inhabitable.
- ) scare evil spirits away by hanging person over snake put.
- ) drill holes in scalp to release demons.
Diathesis-Stress Model
A model of mental disorders that recognizes the roles and interactions of both predispositions and environmental or situational factors.
Major Depression Facts
- 15-20% of the US population will experience major depression at least once.
- 75% of individuals will experience at lease one more episode.
- women are twice as likely to experience an episode than men.
Symptoms of Major Depression - DSM
Must have one of these:
- sad mood or anhedonia.
At least four of these:
- sleep changes, suicide ideation, loss of energy, appetite changes, feelings of worthlessness, etc.
DSM-5 Criteria for Major Depression
- ) Symptoms must have been present during a two-week period.
- ) Symptoms must produce clinically significant impairment in areas of functioning.
- ) Symptoms must not be due to the effects of a substance or a medical condition (i.e hypothyroidism).
Melancholic Depression
At least one of these:
- anhedonia, lack of mood reactivity.
At least three of these:
- early morning awakening, excessive guilt, worse mood in the morning, appetite loss, etc.
Biological Causes of depression
- genetic relatedness (monozygotic twins have 50% chance)
- serotonin dysfunction
Serotonin
- plays a role in regulating mood.
- reduced serotonin signalling in raphe nuclei in depressed ppl.
- lower availability of serotonin in synapses between neurons in depressed ppl.
5-HTT
- serotonin transporter gene, that affects the re uptake of serotonin.
- influences a persons vulnerability to become highly stressed when exposed to difficult life circumstances.
Cognitive Factors
- ) Attributional reformulation.
2. ) Rumination.
Learned helplessness
lack of motivation to avoid unpleasant stimuli after one has failed before to escape similar stimuli.
Attributional Reformulation
the explanations we give to stressors is what determines whether we will develop depression.
- depressed people make attributions that are internal, stable, and global.
Cognitive Triad
automatic thoughts from depressed people about themselves, the world, and their future.
- negative views about one’s self –> negative views about the world –> negative views about one’s future.
Dysfunctional Attitude Scale
measures the intensity of dysfunctional attitudes, a hallmark feature of depression.
ex: I am nothing if a person I love doesn’t love me.
Rumination
the tendency to recurrently self-generate negative thoughts about one’s past.
- predisposes people to depression and relapse.
Cognitive Therapy
Goal is cognitive restructuring:
- ) Become more aware of distorted patterns of thinking.
- ) Challenge distorted patterns of thinking.
- ) Implement more realistic modes of thinking.
Effectiveness of cognitive therapy
- generally equally as effective as SSRIs.
- better at preventing relapse.
Subgenual Cingulate
- central area in depression-relevant brain networks.
- rich in serotonin transporters.
- activation is specific to sadness.
Subgenual Cingulate has projections to:
- prefrontal cortex (attributions).
- nucleus accumbens (pleasure).
- hypothalamus (hunger, sex, sleep).
Deep-brain stimulation (DBS)
electrodes are implanted in the subgenual cingulate, to stimulate overactive brain circuits.
Treatment resistant depression
- includes 20% of the depressed population.
- DBS has been shown to relieve depression in many of these patients.
Psilocybin
- acts through serotonin neurotransmitter.
- has no affinity for dopamine receptors.
- can help decrease depression in treatment-resistant patients.
Results of Rosenhan’s Study
- ) patients sanity was undetected by any of the doctors or staff.
- ) normal behaviour was interpreted as being abnormal.
- ) patients were treated as less than human.
Variations of 5-HTT gene
- ) short/short allele
- ) short/long allele
- ) long/long allele
Short/short allele
- s/s allele is associated with altered efficiency of serotonin re-uptake.
- people with s/s allele have greater amygdala responses to emotional faces.
Forms of Attributional Reformulation
- ) Internal vs. External
- ) Stable vs. Unstable –> problem will persist forever vs. temporary slip up.
- ) Global vs. Specific –> consistent factor vs. context-specific factor.
Sternberg Working Memory Task
asses rumination by examining a persons ability to replenish and update WM after negative events are deemed to be no longer relevant to the current task.
Steps of Cognitive Therapy
- ) therapist guides patient in identifying and correction cognitive distortions.
- ) patients keeps journal and gathers data on their beliefs,
