Psychopathology

• Definitions of abnormality


  • Deviation from social norms
  • Failure to function adequately
  • Statistical infrequency
  • Deviation from ideal mental health
• Social norms are Unwritten behavioral expectations That Vary depending on culture time and context
• Social Deviant are individuals who break the Norms of their society and are seen as abnormal
• Examples of behaviors showing High cultural specificity are tolerance to homosexuality religious experience and public displays of emotion
• Evaluations using social norms does not impose a western view of abnormality on other non-western cultures
• 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

  • They show maladaptive Behavior
  • Their irrational unpredictable actions go against their long-term best interests
  • They show personal anguish and observers feel discomfort in their presence
• Evaluations B to function respects the individual and their own person personal experience which is something that other definitions such as statistical infrequency and deviation from social norms cannot do
• Failure to function adequately only includes people who cannot cope
• Psychopaths often function in society in ways that benefit them personally having low empathy can lead to success in business and politics
• 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 one element of diagnosis of intellectual disability disorder in the DSM 5
• Individuals who are assessed as being abnormal according to statistical and frequency have been evaluated objectively
• 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


  Defined by Joda in 1958, it considers multiple factors including environmental mastery, autonomy, resisting stress, self-actualisation, positive attitude to yourself, and accurate perception of reality
• 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, emotional sadness, cognitive poor concentration, negative schemas

  OCD: Behavioral compulsions, emotional anxiety, cognitive obsessions, hypervigilance
• Behavioral approach to explaining and treating phobias

  Acquisition: Classical conditioning

  Maintenance: Operant conditioning

  Generalization: Conditioned fear response to similar stimuli
• Behaviorist principles have been practically applied to counterconditioning therapies, systematic desensitization and flooding, which are effective treatments for phobias
• Humans often don't display phobic responses to objects that cause the most pain in day-to-day life such as knives or cars, but phobias of snakes and spiders are more common, which may be better explained by evolutionary theory
• Systematic desensitization


  Therapist teaches relaxation techniques, then gradually exposes client to anxiety hierarchy

  Flooding involves immediate and full exposure to maximum phobic stimulus
• Compared to flooding, systematic desensitization is a more pleasurable experience for the client, but flooding may be more effective for some specific phobias
• The use of VR allows a wider range of phobias to be treated, with 83% of participants treated with VR exposure to spiders improving compared to 0% in the control group
• Beck's negative Triad


  Persistent automatic negative bias about the self, the world, and the future
• Ellis's ABC model


  1. Activating event
  2. Belief about the event
  3. Consequence of the belief
• People with bipolar depression experience manic phases where they feel extremely happy, over-excited, confident and focused
• CBT and drug therapy have similar effectiveness rates of 81% after 36 weeks of treatment for depression
• CBT empowers patients and gives a sense of personal efficacy, enabling them to take control of their lives and make positive changes, in contrast to the passive role required for drug therapy
• Genetic explanation for OCD

  OCD is inherited, with around 230 separate candidate genes found more frequently in people with OCD
• Neural explanation for OCD

  Low serotonin levels and overactive 'worry circuit' in the brain
• The concordance rate for monozygotic twins is 68%, suggesting a genetic component, but not 100%, indicating a role for the environment
• SSRI antidepressants are the primary drug treatment for OCD, as they inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, normalizing the activity of the worry circuit
• SSRI drug therapy is effective in the short-term, but may have side effects like nausea, headache and insomnia