Lesson 1: History of Clinical Psychology

• clinical psychology - applied branch of psychology that seeks to understand, assess, treat psychological conditions in the clinical settings
• clinical psychology - focus on treatment, psychotherapy and mental health of people
• psychological disorder - psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress or impairment in functioning and a response that is not typical or culturally expected
• diagnosis - process of determining whether the problem afflicting an individual meets al the criteria for a psychological disorder
• categorical approach - there is a systemic criteria wherein possible symtoms were compiled in a sentence
• dimensional approach - 4D's
• distress - either to self or to others
• dysfunction - refers to a breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning
• dangerousness - created potential harm to self (suicidal ideation) and others (excessive aggression)
• deviance - behavior that is atypical and not culturally accepted, or the behavior manifested is different from the cumulative or from what the society is accepting
• clinical description - unique combination of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that makes up a specific disorder
• etiology - causation, reasons for acquiring the disorder
• course - pattern of the disorder
• onset - when did it started
• prognosis - anticipated course of the disorder
• prevalence - the proportion of a disease or condition in a population at a given time
• incidence - the number of new cases of a disease in a population in a given time period
• biological - genes, nutrition
• psychological - emotions, behavior, thought-process, perception
• social - environment, household, neighborhood, peers
• prevalence - how many from the population
• incidence - how many new cases, in a given time
• treatment and outcome - choosing the appropriate intervention program
• chronic - frequent manifestations of signs and symptoms
• episodic - seasonal
• time-limited - the disorder will improve on its own in a relatively short period of time
• acute - rapid, sudden development
• insidious - gradual development of the disorder
• historical conceptions of abnormal behavior

  * supernatural model

  * biological model

  * psychological model
• animism view - events and activities of man associated with god and spirits
• shamans - first psychologists/clinicians
• trephination - creating a small hole in the skull to release the trapped spirit in the brain
• Egyptians - used narcotics to treat pain
• float test - if they sink, they are innocent; if they float, they are guilty
• Hippocrates (460-375 BC) - father of medicine
• Galen (AD 129-200) - believed mental illness was caused by an imbalance of humors
• humoral theory - four bodily fluids that must be balanced for health
• exorcism - used to treat different kinds of psychological disorder
• mass hysteria - large scale outbreak of bizarre behavior
• emotion contagion - experience of an emotion seems to spread to those around us