Chapt 1.1

• Psychological Disorder is a psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress and impairment in functioning and a response that is not typical or culturally expected.
• Dysfunctionality is a breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning.
• Dysfunctional is often considered to be in a continuum/dimension (degree) rather being categorically (either absent or present).
• Harmful dysfunction it is useful to determine whether the behavior is out of one's control.
• Distress is an individual is extremely upset.
• Dangerousness is that one is threat to one self or other.
• Deviancy is the behavior is atypical and not culturally expected.
• Scientist-Practioner is a mental health professional who take a scientific approach to their work.
• Consumer of Science use the most recent scientific findings and apply them to their work.
• Evaluator of science are evaluating their own assessment and procedures to see whether they work.
• Creator of Science conducts research that results to new useful technique and procedures.
• 3 Primary areas of research: 1. Clinical description 2. Causation (etiology) 3. Treatment and outcome
• Presenting problem: the reason why the person sought a professional.
• Clinical Description: the unique combination of behavior, thoughts and feelings that make up a specific disorder. The aim is to determine the variability of a specific disorder from normal behavior and other disorders.
• Prevalence: the number of people in the entire population that have the disorder.
• Incidence: the cases recorded during the given period.
• Sex Ratio: the proportion of male and female that have the disorder.
• Onset: the period when the first symptoms of the disorder appeared.
• Acute onset: begins suddenly
• Insidious Onset: develop gradually over a long period
• Developmental Psychopathology: the study of changes in abnormal behavior.
• Life-Span Developmental Psychopathology: the study of abnormal behavior across the entire age span.
• Course refers to the development of the disorder, including the SEQUENCE, SPEED AND FORMS.
• Sequence is the pattern or course that the disorder follows as it progresses through time.
• Forms are the different ways the disorder manifests itself at various stages of its course.
• Speed is how quickly the disorder appears and disappears.
• Chronic tends to last a long time/lifetime
• Episodic: recover in a short time but recurrence is highly possible at a later time
• Time-limited: recover in a short period of time even w/o treatment and w/ little to no possibility of recurrence.
• Prognosis: the anticipated course of a disorder.
• Etiology: the study of origins; what causes a certain disorder to happen. It has biological, psychological and social dimensions.
• When a treatment is effective it give us hints about the nature of a disorder and what causes it.
• Psychological dimension: refers to thoughts, feelings, behaviors, personality traits, coping styles, etc.
• Biological dimension: refers to the brain, nervous system, genetics, hormones, etc.
• Social dimension: refers to family, friends, culture, society, environment, etc.
• Eclectic Approach: treatments that do not adhere strictly to a one theoritical approach.
• Scientific Method of Treatment: the empirical- based approach in treating a disorder.
• Integrative Approach: no single influence- biological, behavioral, cognitive, emotion or social-ever occurs in isolation.
• Systematic Perspective: no factor that contributes to psychopathology can be considered independent.
• Genes are long segments of DNA, it doesnt absolutely determine our development.