Week 1 - Abnormality Flashcards
What is the Demonic Model?
Belief that mental illness was due to demonic possession.
What is the Medical Model?
Mental illness seen as a physical alignment that could be cured. Lead to hospitalisation of individuals in asylums.
What does institutionalisation refer to?
The poor treatment and efficacy conditions.
What does deinstitutionalisation refer to?
The introduction of more effective treatment allowing a more normal life. In turn resulted in higher levels of poverty and homelessness.
Definition of Mental Health
Capacity of an individual to behave in a way that promotes their emotional and social wellbeing.
Mental Health Problems definition
A wide range of emotional and behavioural abnormalities that affect people throughout their lives.
What is a mental disorder?
A clinically recognisable set of symptoms and behaviours that cause distress to the individual and impair ability to function as usual.
What are the 2 models which help explain a number of disorders?
The Biopsychosocial Model & the Diathesis-Stress Model.
What does the Biopsychosocial Model believe about mental disorders?
Believes mental health and related disorders are influenced by a number of factors which interlink.
What are the 3 factors of the Biopsychosocial Model and examples of each.
Biological - eg genetics
Psychological - eg cognitive biases, thought patterns
Social - eg support, stress
What does the Diathesis-Stress Model believe about mental disorders?
Disorders are triggered when people with pre-existing vulnerabilities experience some sort of stressor.
Diathesis refers to
Some sort of internal factor (eg genetic) which predisposes them to mental illness
What are the 5 reasons explaining abnormality?
Statistical infrequency Personal distress Impairment Violation of norms Biological dysfunction
What does it mean by Statistical Infrequency when proposing reasons to describe abnormality?
Statistical infrequency refers to the disorder being rare in the population.
What does it mean by Violation of norms?
The person is displaying behaviour that is not socially acceptable.
What are the 3 main issues when diagnosing mental illness and what do they mean?
Social Context
- labelling disorders when socially inconvenient
Labelling Vs Diagnosing
- terms that have no or limited support
Cultural Differences
- some disorders are specific to certain cultures
What are the 4 common misconceptions about diagnosis?
Diagnosis reduces the individual to their disorder
Diagnosis are too unreliable to be useful
Diagnosis is only descriptive and therefore meaningless
Diagnoses stigmatise people
What is clinical diagnosis based on?
The criteria provided in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
What does the DSM-5 allow?
Consensus between practitioners in different disciplines and in different countries.
What are some weaknesses of the DSM-5?
Validity issues
Comorbidity
