Psychopathology

• statistical infrequency is relevant to how often we come across something abnormal
• deviation from social norms is when a person behaves in a way that is different from how we expect people to behave
• failure to function adequately is when a person is unable to maintain basic standards of nutrition and hygiene, cannot hold down a job or maintain relationships
• Rosenhan & Seligman (1989) proposed signs that someone isnt coping :

  • when a person doesn’t conform to interpersonal rules
  • severe personal distress
  • irrational or dangerous behaviour
• deviation from ideal mental health is when people aren’t psychologically healthy
• Jahoda (1958) suggested the following criteria for good mental health:

  • no distress
  • we are rational and cope with stress
  • we have a realistic view of the world
  • good self esteem
  • independant
• cultural relativism is the idea that cultural norms and values are culture specific and no one’s culture is superior to another
• negative - social norms hugely vary from one community to another
• negative - deviation from social norms are hard to measure and rely on a patients self report which might not be reliable
• positive - failure to function adequately is reliable as you would find the same results if tested again
• negative - deviation from ideal mental health isn’t reliable as abnormality isnt always accompanied by dysfunction eg harold shipman
• harold shipman:

  • doctor and serial killer
  • bright child, degree, working class
  • killed up to 215 people over 23 years
• positive - statistical infrequency is useful because it’s used in clinical practise as a diagnosis and in assessments
• negative - statistical infrequency is limited because infrequent characteristics can be positive and negative
• positive - deviation from social norms is useful as it is used in clinical practise
• positive - failure to function represents a sensible threshold for when people need professional help
• positive - deviation from ideal mental health is comprehensive
• negative - deviation from mental health is limited as the different elements aren’t equally applicable across a range of cultures.
• you experience a fear
• you have a phobia
• fear is a reaction and once the danger has passed the fear will become less intense
• phobias are physical and mental anxiety, which are always present and are felt even when there is no danger to trigger the response
• DSM 5 stands for diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder
• DSM 5 is used by clinicians and psychiatrists to diagnose psychiatric illnesses
• specific phobias are phobias of an object
• social anxiety (social phobia) is a phobia of a social situation
• agoraphobia is a phobia of being outside or leaving your home
• behavioural characteristics are the way people actc
• emotional characteristics are the ways people feel
• cognitive characteristics are the way people think
• the two process model is by mowrer in 1947 which depicts a behavioural approach to phobias
• phobias are learned in the first place by classical conditioning
• phobias are maintained by operant conditioning
• watson and rayner (1920) created a phobia in a 9 month old baby called “little albert“
• during classical conditioning:

  • we associate something we have no fear of as neutral stimulus (NS)
  • something that triggers fear is an unconditioned stimulus (US)
  • fear is an unconditioned response (UCR)
• during “little albert”

  • the baby wasn’t scared of the rat but was scared of the sound
  • putting the rat and sound together made the baby have a phobia of rats
• if we do something and it has negative consequences then we won't repeat this action
• classical conditioning associates an involuntary response and a stimulus
• operant conditioning associated a voluntary behaviour and a consequence
• in operant conditioning, if there are negative consequences to our actions we will stop doing them