psychopathology

• I've combined and summarized the content from my Psychopathology videos into this Psychopathology revision video
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• Definitions of abnormality


  • Deviation from social norms
  • Failure to function adequately
  • Statistical infrequency
  • Deviation from ideal mental health
• Social norms


  Unwritten behavioral expectations that vary depending on culture, time and context
• Behaviors showing high cultural specificity

  • Tolerance to homosexuality
  • Religious experience
  • Public displays of emotion
• Diagnosing abnormality according to social norms is not ethnocentric
• Defining people who move to a new culture as abnormal according to the new cultural norms can be inappropriate
• Failure to function adequately


  Individuals cannot cope with the day-to-day challenges of daily life such as maintaining personal hygiene
• Features of failure to function adequately

  • Maladaptive behavior
  • Irrational, unpredictable actions that go against their long-term best interests
  • Personal anguish
  • Observers feel discomfort in their presence
• Statistical infrequency


  Someone is mentally abnormal if their mental condition is very rare in the population
• The normal distribution curve shows a population's average spread of specific characteristics
• Just over 2% of the population have 70 IQ points or fewer, which is a criteria for diagnosis of intellectual disability disorder in the DSM 5
• Not all statistically rare traits are negative, for example IQs of 130 are just as statistically rare as IQs of 70
• There are common mental health conditions like anxiety, the NHS found 17% of people surveyed met the criteria for a common mental health disorder
• Deviation from ideal mental health

  A humanistic definition by Joda in 1958 that defines features of ideal mental health and deviation from these indicates abnormality
• Features of ideal mental health

  • Environmental mastery
  • Autonomy
  • Resisting stress
  • Self-actualisation
  • Positive attitude to yourself
  • Accurate perception of reality
• Deviation from ideal mental health does not simply state what is wrong, it also suggests how problems can be overcome
• It's too strict to set of criteria to define mental health as it's challenging to achieve all of the requirements at any one time, most people would be defined as abnormal
• Characteristics of phobias, depression and OCD

  • Phobias: Behavioral avoidance, Panic, Failure to function, Emotional anxiety, Cognitive irrational thoughts
  • Depression: Behavioral reduction in activity level, Emotional sadness, Cognitive poor concentration, Negative schemas
  • OCD: Behavioral compulsions, Emotional anxiety, Cognitive obsessions, Hypervigilance
• Behavioral approach to explaining and treating phobias

  1. Acquisition: Classical conditioning

  2. Maintenance: Operant conditioning

  3. Generalization
• Behaviorist principles have been practically applied to counterconditioning therapies, systematic desensitization and flooding, which are effective treatments for phobias
• Humans don't often display phobic responses to objects that cause the most pain in day-to-day life such as knives or cars, however phobias of snakes and spiders are more common, which may be better explained by evolutionary theory
• Cognitive-Neorationalist (CNOR) approach to explaining depression

  1. Beck's negative triad: Negative schemas about the self, the world, and the future

  2. Ellis' ABC model: Activating event, Beliefs, Consequences
• The CNOR approach argues depression is due to irrational thoughts from maladaptive internal mental processes
• People with bipolar depression experience manic phases where they feel extremely happy, over-excited, confident and focused, which is a problem for Beck's theory which explains depression is due to negative schemas
• CBT and REBT treatments for depression are successful, suggesting the underlying cognitive explanations they are based on are valid
• Some people with depression are too severely depressed to engage with the demands of CBT, as it requires motivation and commitment
• Biological explanations for OCD

  • Genetic explanation: Predisposition to OCD requires a range of genetic changes
  • Neural explanation: Low serotonin levels, Overactive worry circuit
• The concordance rate for monozygotic twins is 68%, suggesting there must be some role for the environment in the development of OCD
• The diathesis-stress explanation combines a genetic vulnerability to OCD with an environmental stressor needed for the disorder to develop
• Drug therapies for OCD

  • SSRIs: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
  • Benzodiazepines: Enhance GABA and slow the central nervous system
  • Tricyclics and SNRIs: Increase serotonin and norepinephrine
• SSRI drugs are the primary class used to control OCD symptoms, and research suggests they are effective in the short-term
• Drug therapy is relatively inexpensive and convenient for patients compared to psychological therapies like CBT, but can have side effects