Week 1 - Conceptual issues in abnormal psychology Flashcards
Most common elements to define abnormality is psychology are?
Statistical rarity and 3Ds
3Ds stands for?
deviance, distress, dysfunction
Characteristics that are rarely seen in society used to define “abnormality”.
Statistical rarity
(Can be a rare disease or a rare talent)
The field of abnormal psychology can/cannot be defined solely on statistical rarity.
Can not
Unlike the criterion of statistical rarity, the criterion of ___________ includes a value component. According to this criterion, a behaviour is considered to be abnormal if it is negatively evaluated by society.
‘deviance’
Criterion of ________ allows an individual and not society, to define their behaviour as abnormal or normal.
Distress
(self inflicted distress such as starvation for political or religious reasons can not be considered abnormality)
Widely accepted in defining abnormality, this criterion asks if the behaviour is maladaptive and interferes with daily functioning?
Dysfunction
(evaluated mood and creativity during manic episodes may not interfere with functioning, but person may engage is behaviours they otherwise consider dangerous, such as risky financial investments, sex, or aggressive behaviours.
Major limitation of dysfunction criterion is the same as norm violation (not fitting societal norms can be seen as dysfunctional). True/False
True
(e.g. running away of African slaves or drapetomania) was viewed as type of insanity requiring treatment.
A syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning
mental disorder
Psychiatry became recognised as medical specialty about ______ years ago.
150
Who considered insanity as one major single disease
Heinrich Neumann
Who proposed 3 classes of mental illness - versania (poisons), lunacy (phases of the moon), and insanity (disease of heredity).
Paracelsus
Who distinguished 13 categories of mental illness - described diagnostic categories of unknown causation in terms of symptoms, onset, duration and other characteristics until their causation was discovered.
Kraepelin
Current conceptualisations of mental disorders imply
______________dysfunction or illness contributes to the development of symptoms.
underlying
If someone believed that a mental disorder was a disease that progressed through increasingly severe symptoms, this is most consistent with the
___________ perspective.
biological
Aim of psychiatry is to describe symptom clusters and label them as disease or disorder. True/False
True
A _________ is a grouping of signs and symptoms, based on their frequent co-occurrence, that may suggest a common underlying pathogenesis, course, familial pattern, or treatment selection.
syndrome
According to Hippocrates, the physical and mental health requires a balance of “ ______ __________”
four humours
(4 body fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm.
Mental illness at the time believed to be caused by a detached womb wandering in the body.
Hysteria
Historical treatments that came out of the biological perspective:
- ECT -electroconvulsive therapy
- psychosurgery- prefrontal lobotomy
Model proposing that symptoms result from the disturbances in the body.
Biological
Structural brain abnormalisties and neurochemical imbalances are focus of contemporary _________ theories.
biological
According to biological model, the two main causes of brain abnormalities are genetic make up and trauma. True/False
True
(E.g. enlarged ventricles in schizophrenia)
Limitations of biological perspective?
-Correlation does not imply causation
-mental disorders should be conceptualised on a continuum rather than qualitatively distinct.
Approach that views abnormality to be caused by psychological processes, how one sees the world, beliefs, motivations.
Psychological
__________ is both a theory to explain normal and abnormal functioning, and therapeutic treatment to uncover causes and reduce abnormal functioning.
Psychoanalysis
________ was a founder of psychoanalytic approach.
Freud
According to psychoanalytic theory, _________ mind is behind much of human behaviour.
unconscious (latent content)
(it interprets surface of manifest)
According to Freud, behaviour is determined by complex interaction of three forces:
ID
Ego
Super ego
According to Freud, human beings are born with two primitive biological drives: _______ and _________ drives.
sexual and aggressive
The energy stemming from more dominant sexual drive is called ________.
libido
The ______ operates on pleasure and instant gratification principles.
ID
The _____ operates on reality principle and requires higher cog functions such as memory, learning and language.
ego (conscious)
The ______ _____ operates on morality principle, societal values and morals which are in conflict with primitives drives of the id.
super ego
Ego is the mediator between desires of the id and the ideals of super ego. True/ False
True
Psychosexual stages of development:
- oral (0-2) - mouth, sucking, biting, chewing
- anal (2-3) - retaining and expelling feaces
- phallic (3-6) - development of superego (Oedipus complex for boys, Electra complex for girls, penis envy)
- latency (6-12) - genital phase - mature love
While the ____ is a true generator of behaviour, the ____ controls how it’s expresses, trying to keep the expression continuous in line with moral values of _____ _____.
ID, ego, super ego
According to psychoanalysis, ________ is the ultimate sign of psychic distress.
anxiety
(ego is threatened)
To avoid the pain of anxiety, failure, guilt or shame, the ego employs ________ mechanisms.
defence
The person avoids anxiety by not allowing unwanted though to become conscious.
repression
(e.g. A child, who faced abuse by a parent, later has no memory of the events but has trouble forming relations)
Refusing to perceive the anxiety-provoking aspects of reality.
denial
(e.g. Someone denies that they have an alcohol or substance use disorder because they can still function and go to work each day)
Attributing own thoughts, emotions or desires to another person.
projection
Justifying difficult or unacceptable feelings with seemingly logical reasons and explanations.
rationalisation
(e.g. a student who is rejected from her dream college may explain that she’s happy to be attending a school that’s less competitive and more welcoming)
Acting in a way that is opposite of the impulses a person is afraid to admit.
reaction formation
(e.g. insulting or teasing someone with whom they are romantically interested or being kind to someone they dislike)
Shifting of sexual or aggressive impulses from an unacceptable target to an acceptable substitute.
displacement
(e.g. a person angry at their boss may “take out” their anger on a family member)
Retreating to previous developmental stage.
regression
(e.g. an overwhelmed child may revert to bedwetting or thumb-sucking)
Expressing of sexual or aggressive impulses in a way that is acceptable by society.
sublimation
(e.g. someone with anger issues may channel their aggressive urges into sports instead of lashing out at others physically or verbally)
Creating overly logical and rational responses to distance yourself from anxiety provoking emotions.
Intellectualisation
_________ is a collective term for symptoms of anxiety, depression and extreme dependence.
Neuroses
State characterised by the loss of touch with reality, ________.
psychosis
(Hallucinations, delussions)
Contributions of psychoanalytical approach in terms of patient treatment?
- extended the boundaries of the definition of
mental disorder to include not only symptoms of insanity, but also symptoms of anxiety, depression
and other neuroses. - treament of patients from institutions to office
- enabling mental
health professionals other than psychiatrists to provide treatment.
Major critic of the psychoanalytic approach?
- complex, hard to define and operate at a level that
is not available to consciousness. - difficult to measure and test using
reliable and valid empirical techniques. Indeed, - little controlled research evaluating the
fundamental concepts of the psychodynamic perspective to this day.
Theories that focus on the interplay between unconscious psychological processes in determining thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
psychodynamic theories
Theories that rely on the principles of learning to explain both normal and abnormal behaviour founded by Watson.
behavioural approach
AKA learning perspective
What is the behavioural approach/learning perspective treatments?
-Aversion therapy
-systematic desensitisation
-token economies
Treatment that involves the pairing of an unpleasant stimulus with a deviant or maladaptive source of pleasure (such as excessive alcohol consumption) in order to induce an aversive reaction to the formerly pleasurable stimulus.
aversion therapy
Behavioural technique that aims to reduce the client’s anxiety through progressive, imaginal exposure to feared stimuli paired with the induction of a relaxation response
systematic desensitisation
Treatment application of operant conditioning in which individuals receive tokens for exhibiting desired behaviours that can then be exchanged for privileges and rewards; these tokens are withheld when the individual exhibits unwanted behaviour.
token economy
Therapist puts their feelings onto the client. Behaving in a way that we actually feel. Showing up late to an appointment because you don’t want to see them, cutting them off short.
countertransference
Cognitive-affective representations of the self, others, and their relationships, object _________.
object relations
Process of learning behaviours by imitating others.
modelling (Bandura)
A cognitive approach to understanding mental disorder, focusing on the effect of irrational beliefs on emotions.
ABC model
A = event,
B = Person’s interpretation,
C = person’s reactions to event.
Errors or biases in people’s information processing system characterised by faulty thinking, _________ distortions.
cognitive
(Ellis and Beck)
What are the types of cognitive distortions?
§ Selective abstraction
§ Overgeneralisation
§ Dichotomous thinking
§ Back and white thinking (all or nothing)
§ Unrealistic expectations
§ Selective thinking
§ Catastrophising
§ Magnifying or exaggerating unpleasantness
§ Personalising
§ Mistaking feelings for facts
§ Jumping to negative conclusions
Cognitive restructuring
and behavioural experiment are an examples of treatments using _________ perspective.
cognitive
A therapeutic approach that teaches clients to question the automatic beliefs, assumptions, and predictions that often lead to negative emotions and to replace negative thinking with more realistic and positive beliefs
cognitive restructuring
Person testing validity of certain beliefs might ask a friend
out for a coffee to test the belief ‘people always reject me’, this is an example of ___________ experiment.
Behavioural
Founded by Rogers and Maslow, this approach views that the natural tendency of humans is
towards growth and self actualisation;
abnormality arises as a result of societal pressures to conform to dictates that clash with a person’s
self-actualisation process.
humanistic
approach
-self actualisation
-unconditioned positive regard
-person-centred therapy
-in congruence/congruent are all examples of treatment approaches from ___________ perspective.
humanistic
In humanistic theory, fulfilment of one’s potential.
self-actualisation
Essential part of person-centred therapy; the therapist expresses full acceptance of the client as a
person, without judgment, unconditional ________ ________.
positive regard
Perspective that proposes that abnormal behaviours are best understood in terms of the social environment of the individual - family functioning, social networks, access to social resources, cultural values and influences, religious and spiritual beliefs.
sociocultural perspective of mental illness
