week 1 Flashcards
How do we define normality?
Sociocultural normality: socioculturally expected
Statistical normality: statistically common
Biological normality: conforms to standard understanding of biology.
A consesus arrived at by qualified decision makers.
Causes functional impairment or psychological distress
DSM definition of abnormality
Abnormal behaviours are behaviours that are unexpected in their cultural context, associated with present distress and impairment in functioning
What are some of the problems that come with abnormality?
Poor decision making, lack of impulse control, dificulty regulating emotions, intolerance of uncertainty
Approaches to abnormality throughout history
Supernatural and religious explanations
Biological approaches, psychological approaches
Issues with defining and looking at abnormality
Most mental disorders look like normal human functioning but at extreme levels.
Most mental disorders are multifactorial with genetic, psychological, social pathways
What is the diathesis-stress approach
View that mental disorder onset is explained by interaction of both diathesis and stressors.
1. Diathesis: things that render an individual vulnerable to development of a mental disorder
Stress: environmental triggers promoting onset of mental disorder
Case formulation
Assess the following;
Predisposing factors that render the client vulernable to experience of mental disorder (personality, family history etc)
precipatting factors: likely to have triggered initial or current onset of disorder (job loss etc)
perpetuating factors: that are acting to maintain client distress and impairment (unsupportive relationship etc)
Protective factors: contributing to strength and resileience (positive personal attitude, family support etc)
What are the purposes of the clinical assessment
To understand the individual
to predict behaviour
to plan treatment
to evaluate treatment outcome
domains of assessment
clinical interview physical exam mental status exam behavioural assessment and observations psychological testing
what kind of information is obtained in a clinical interview
demographic data medical history family history educational and vocational history psychological history
What does a mental status examination cover
Appearance and behaviour mood and affect speech and language thought form and content sensory and perceptual abnormalities cogntitive functioning judgement and insight risk
What does a behavioural assesment cover
aims to assess an individuals thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in specific situations or contexts,
focus on the present, direct and minimally inferential. Target behaviours are identified and oberserved. Focus on atedecents, behaviours and consequences. can be formal or informal.
Advantages of the DSM-5
taxonomy of disorders, clear commmunication between proffesionals. Facilitates legal and social comprehension of diagnosis. Potetnailly empowering for clients to find out disorder has been identified.
Disadvantages of the DSM-5
loss of information by reducing client to label, plus stigma. Discrete categories do not ackowledge deeper symptoms, not everyone fits into a category. high comborbidity between everything. NOT EVERYONE IS THE SAME.
Standard criteria present in the DSM
symptoms are not due to a medical condition (EG a brain tumour) or the effects of a symptom (e.g. they may look like a schizophrenic, but they’re also on ice)
for a syndrome to be considered psychopathology, individual must be experiencing distress, or exhibiting impaired functioning
