Psychopathology

• Beck’s negative triad:

  • Component of Beck’s cognitive explanation for depression
  • Suggests negative thoughts in depression broach three categories: the self, the world, and the future
• Cognitive behavioural therapy:

  • Form of therapy for depression
  • Aims to combat irrational cognitive biases directly
• Depression:

  • Mood disorder causing chronic low mood
• Deviation from ideal mental health:

  • Definition of abnormality suggesting if a person does not achieve one of the six criteria of ideal mental health, they are acting abnormally
  • Criteria include coping with stress, self-actualisation, sufficient self-esteem, autonomy, adaptation to new situations, and an accurate idea of the world
• Deviation from social norms:

  • Definition of abnormality suggesting deviation from cultural and social rules indicates abnormality
  • Temporally and spatially restricted; e.g., homosexuality was viewed as abnormal in the past and in some countries today
• Ellis’s ABC model:

  • Explanation for depression suggesting it is caused by irrational beliefs
  • "Activating event" (A) is interpreted by "Beliefs" (B) leading to unhealthy "Consequences" (C), perpetuating depression
• Failure to function adequately:

  • Definition of abnormality suggesting abnormal behavior if a person is unable to function in everyday life
  • Encompasses an individual’s quality of life and objective behavior
• Anxiety hierarchy:

  • Order of situations exposing patients to increasing anxiety inducing stimuli
• Flooding:

  • Therapy for phobias exposing patients to a large amount of fear stimuli to associate the stimulus with safety
• OCD:

  • Disorder characterized by obsessions (intrusive thoughts) and compulsions (repetitive behaviors)
• Phobia:

  • Intense, irrational fear of a stimulus
• Reciprocal inhibition:

  • Inhibition of fear by learning to be relaxed, as both responses cannot occur simultaneously
• Relaxation techniques:

  • Taught to patients to erase uncomfortable emotions of fear arousal, helping eliminate a fear response in a phobia through reciprocal inhibition
• Statistical infrequency:

  • Explanation for abnormality suggesting abnormalities can be statistically determined
  • Behavior falling outside the range of normal distribution can be labeled as statistically infrequent and therefore abnormal
• Systematic desensitization:

  • Therapy for phobias involving establishing a fear hierarchy and teaching relaxation techniques
  • Use of relaxation at every level of the fear hierarchy gradually extinguishes the fear
• Deviation from social norms is defined as any behavior that goes against societal expectations about how to and not to behave, often rooted in a desire to make society more pleasant
• Emotional characteristics of depression include feelings of intense sadness and worthlessness, with some individuals also reporting feelings of anger
• Behavioural characteristics of depression involve either increased or reduced levels of activity, changes in sleeping patterns, agitation, restlessness, and appetite changes
• Cognitive characteristics of depression include negative thoughts that lead to negative emotions, such as negative expectations, thoughts of worthlessness, and self-fulfilling beliefs
• Phobias are initiated through classical conditioning by pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus that causes fear, leading to a conditioned response of fear
• Systematic desensitisation is a treatment for phobias that aims to replace the association between fear and the phobic stimulus with an association between relaxation and the phobic stimulus, gradually exposing patients to increasingly anxiety-inducing scenarios
• Systematic desensitisation is preferred to flooding as flooding can be highly traumatic, limiting its effectiveness as many patients may be unable to complete the treatment
• The diathesis-stress model suggests that certain genes create a vulnerability for mental disorders, and after an activating event or trauma, mental disorders develop in these individuals
• A negative triad is a cognitive approach to understanding depression, focusing on how expectations about the self, world, and future lead to depression
• Failure to function adequately is defined as an inability to cope with everyday life, causing distress to the individual or others around them, especially if the individual is unaware that their behavior is distressing others
• The social learning theory explains phobias as being acquired through modeling the behavior of others, where individuals imitate fear reactions they observe in others because the behavior is rewarding and gets attention
• Emotional characteristics of OCD include feelings of anxiety and shame associated with obsessions and compulsions, as individuals are aware that their behavior is excessive
• Behavioural characteristics of OCD involve compulsive behaviors aimed at alleviating anxiety caused by obsessions, often repetitive and not necessarily connected to the obsession
• Cognitive characteristics of OCD include recurrent, intrusive thoughts that may be irrational and embarrassing, with common obsessional themes involving germs
• Cognitive theory explains depression as being due to irrational thinking and cognitions skewed towards negative thoughts
• Statistical infrequency is defined as abnormal behavior that is extremely rare or characteristics not displayed by many people
• Biological theory explains OCD as caused by abnormal levels of dopamine and serotonin, and a non-functioning worry circuit
• Emotional characteristics of phobias include anxiety triggered by the phobic stimulus, often out of proportion to the actual threat posed by it
• Behavioural characteristics of phobias involve avoidance of situations with the phobic stimulus and freezing in its presence, interfering with daily life
• Cognitive characteristics of phobias include irrational thoughts and anxiety not reduced by reasoning, with the individual aware of the irrationality
• In the case of Little Albert by Watson and Rayner (1920), a fear of fluffy white objects was conditioned in a young baby through pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus
• Depression is treated using CBT, a combination of cognitive therapy (changing maladaptive thoughts) and behavioral therapy (changing behavior in response to thoughts)
• OCD is treated using the biological approach by administering drugs like SSRIs to increase serotonin levels in the body
• Deviation from ideal mental health is defined as displaying the absence of the ideal mental health criteria set by Jahoda
• The deviation from ideal health definition is criticized for being founded on unrealistic criteria that are unlikely for any one individual to display all the time