Psychopathology Key Terms

• statistical infrequency

  Occurs when an individual has a less common characteristic, for example being more depressed or less intelligent than most of the population.
• deviation from social norms


  Concerns behaviour that is different from the accepted standards of behaviour in a community or society
• Failure to function adequately


  Occurs when someone is unable to cope with ordinary demands of day-to-day living.
• deviation from ideal mental health


  Occurs when someone does not meet a set of criteria for good mental health
• phobia


  an irrational fear of an object or situation
• behavioural


  ways in which people act
• emotional


  related to a person's feelings or mood
• cognitive


  refers to the process of 'knowing', including thinking, reasoning, remembering, believing
• depression


  A mental disorder characterised by low mood and low energy levels
• OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)


  A condition characterised by obsessions and/or compulsive behaviour. obsessions are cognitive whereas compulsions are behavioural
• behavioural approach


  A way of explaining behaviour in terms of what is observable and in terms of learning.
• two-process model


  An explanation for the onset and persistence of disorders that create anxiety, such as phobias. The two processes are classical conditioning for onset and operant conditioning for persistence.
• classical conditioning


  Learning by association
• operant conditioning


  a form of learning in which behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences
• systematic desensitisation


  A behavioural therapy designed to reduce an unwanted response, such as anxiety, to a stimulus. SD involves drawing up a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations related to the phobic stimulus, teaching the patient to relax, and then exposing them to phobic situations. The patient works their way through the hierarchy whilst maintaining relaxation
• flooding


  A behavioural therapy in which a phobic patient is exposed to an extreme form of a phobic stimulus in order to reduce anxiety triggered by that stimulus. This takes place across a small number of long therapy sessions.
• cognitive approach


  focused on how our mental processes affect behaviour
• negative triad


  beck proposed that there are three kinds of negative thinking that contribute to becoming depressed: negative views of the world, the future and the self. such negative views lead a person to interpret their experiences in a negative way and so make them more vulnerable to depression
• ABC model


  Ellis proposed that depression occurs when an activating event (A) triggers an irrational belief (B) which in turn produces a consequence (C), i.e. an emotional response like depression. The key to this process is the irrational belief.
• cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)


  A method for treating mental disorders based on both cognitive and behavioural techniques. From the cognitive viewpoint the therapy aims to deal with thinking, such as challenging negative thoughts. The therapy also includes behavioural techniques such as behavioural activation.
• irrational thoughts


  Also called dysfunctional thoughts. In Ellis's model and therapy, these are defined as thoughts that are likely to interfere with a person's happiness. Such dysfunctional thoughts lead to mental disorders such as depression.
• biological approach


  a perspective that emphasises the importance of physical processes in the body such as genetic inheritance and neural function
• genetic explanations


  Genes make up chromosomes and consist of DNA which codes the physical features of an organism and psychological features. Genes are transmitted from parents to offspring.
• neural explanations


  The view that physical and psychological characteristics are determined by the behaviour of the nervous system, in particular the brain as well as individual neurons.
• drug therapy


  Treatment involving drugs, i.e. chemicals that have a particular effect on the functioning of the brain or some other body system. In the case of psychological disorders such drugs usually affect neurotransmitter levels.