Psychopathology

• Deviation from social norms:

  Social norms are unwritten behavioural expectations that vary depending on culture, time and context.
• Deviation from social norms:

  Social deviants are individuals who break the norms of their society and are seen as abnormal. Examples of behaviours showing high cultural specificity are tolerance of homosexuality, religious experiences and public displays of emotion.
• Deviation from social norms:

  Using social norms does not impose a Western view of abnormality on other non- western cultures. For this reason, it is argued diagnosing abnormality to social norms is not ethnocentric.
• Deviation from social norms:

  Defining people who move to a new culture according to the new cultural norms can be inappropriate E.g. people from an Afro- Caribbean background living in the UK are seven times more likely to be diagnosed with Schizophrenia.
• Failure to function adequately:

  When individuals cannot cope with the day to day challenges of daily life, such as maintaining personal hygiene.
• Failure to function adequately:

  Rosenhan and Seligman’s features- they show maladaptive behaviour, their irrational and unpredictable actions go against their long- term best interests. They show personal anguish, and observers feel discomfort in their presence.
• Failure to function adequately respects the individual and their own 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 can often function in society in ways that benefit them personally. Having lower 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 rarity of the behaviour is judged objectively using statistics, comparing the individual’s behaviour to the rest of the population.
• Statistical Infrequency:

  The normal distribution curve shows a population’s average spread of specific characteristics. E.G. one element of a diagnosis of intellectual disability disorder in the DSM5 is having 70 IQ points or fewer (just over 2% of the population)
• Statistical Infrequency:

  Individuals who are assessed as being abnormal according to statistical infrequency have been evaluated objectively, this is better than other definitions that depend on the subjective opinion of a clinician.
• Statistical Infrequency:

  Not all statistically rare traits are negative, for example IQs of 130 are just as statistically rare as IQs of 70. Also, there are common MH. conditions like anxiety. NHS found 17% of people surveyed met the criteria for a common mental heath disorder.
• Deviation from ideal mental health:

  Humanistic definition by Jahoda in 1958. Rather than defining abnormality, it defines features of ideal mental health, and deviation from these indicates abnormality.
• Deviation from ideal mental health:

  Jahoda’s six criteria of ideal mental health are environmental mastery, autonomy, resisting stress, self- actualisation, a positive attitude to yourself and an accurate perception of reality.
• Deviation from ideal mental health is a holistic definition, as it considers multiple factors in diagnosis and provides suggestions for personal development. DFIMH does not simply state what is wrong, but also suggests how problems can be overcome.
• Deviation from ideal mental health:

  It is too strict a set of criteria to define mental health, as it is challenging to achieve all of the requirements at any one time, most people would be defined as abnormal.
• Phobias- behavioural characteristics:

  • Avoidance= physically adapting normal behaviour to avoid phobic objects.
  • Panic= an uncontrollable physical response
  • Failure to function= difficulty taking part in normal day- to- day activities.
• Phobias- emotional characteristics:

  • Anxiety= an uncomfortably high and persistent state of arousal.
  • Fear= intense emotional sensation of extreme and unpleasant alertness. It only subsides when the phobic object is removed.
• Phobias- cognitive characteristics:

  • Irrational thoughts (fears)= negative and irrational mental processes that include an exaggerated belief in the harm the phobic object could case.
  • Reduced cognitive capacity= due to attentional focus on a phobic object.
• Depression- behavioural characteristics:

  • Reduction in activity level= includes lethargy, lacking the energy needed to perform everyday activities.
  • A change in eating behaviour= either significant weight gain or weight loss
  • Aggression= to others/ self harm.
• Depression- emotional characteristics:

  • Sadness= a persistent, very low mood
  • Guilt= linked to helplessness and a feeling that they have no value in comparison to other people
• Depression- cognitive characteristics:

  • Poor concentration= people with depression cannot give their full attention to tasks
  • Negative schemas= automatic negative biases when thinking about themselves, the world and their future.
• OCD- behavioural characteristics:

  • Compulsions= behaviours performed repeatedly to reduce anxiety e.g. checking and cleaning behaviours
  • Avoidance= take actions to avoid objects that trigger obsessions
• OCD- emotional characteristics:

  • Anxiety= an uncomfortably high and persistent state of arousal, making it difficult to relax
  • Depression= a consistent and long lasting sense of sadness due to being unable to control thoughts.
• OCD- cognitive characteristics:

  • Obsessions= intrusive, irrational, recurrent thoughts that tend to be unpleasant, catastrophic thoughts.
  • Hypervigliance= a permanent state of alertness, looking for the source of obsessive thoughts.
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • According to behaviourists, behaviours are phobias learnt via experience. The two- process model (Mower) describes how phobias are acquired and maintained.
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Acquisition- classical conditioning suggests the phobic object changes from being a neutral stimulus with no fear response to a conditioned stimulus with a fear response by being presented at the same time as an unconditioned stimulus that naturally causes a fear response forming an association.
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Maintenance- operant conditioning suggests avoidance behaviour leads to a reduction in anxiety, which is a pleasant sensation. This negative reinforcement strengthens the phobic response.
  • Generalisation is a conditioned fear response is also experienced in the presence of stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus.
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Watson and Rayner- Watson paired showing a rat with hitting a large metal pole behind a child’s head (Little Albert) creating a loud noise and scaring the child. A phobic response formed, demonstrating phobias can be acquired through association.
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • DiNardo- showed while conditioning events like “dog bites” were common in participants with dog phobias (56%), they were just as common in participants with no dog phobia (66%)
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Behaviourist theories of phobias have been practically applied to counter-conditioning therapies, systematic desensitisation and flooding. As these treatments are effective, this suggests the behaviourist principles they are based on are valid.
• Explaining phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Humans also 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. These phobias may be better explained by evolutionary theory.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Behaviourist therapies counter condition phobias, replacing the fear association with a relaxation/ calm association. These therapies assume that fear and relaxation as opposite emotions cannot co- exist, called reciprocal inhibition.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Systematic desensitisation the therapist first teaches relaxation techniques like breathing exercises, then progresses through an anxiety hierarchy created by the client and therapist from least feared presentation to most. A stepped approach is used, with the client relaxing at each stage. This gradual exposure leads to the extinction of the fear association, and a new association with relaxation is formed.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Flooding involves immediate and full exposure to the maximum level of the phobic stimulus. This will cause a temporary panic in the client, and they may attempt to escape. The clinician will keep the client in this situation until the temporary panic has stopped due to exhaustion and the client is calm in the presence of the phobic stimulus.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Compared to flooding, the client controls SD, making it a more pleasurable experience as they limits their anxiety. However, this slower process can result in more sessions for SD compared to flooding. Also, flooding isn’t appropriate for older people.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Both systematic desensitisation and flooding are more effective in treating specific phobias than social phobias, as it is difficult to stimulate social situations and interactions with unfamiliar individuals in a therapist’s office.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • Garcia- Palacios found 83% of participants treated with VR exposure to spiders improved compared to 0% in the control group. This suggests the principles of SD are valid, and the use of VR allows a wider range of phobias to be treated.
• Treating phobias- behaviourist approach:

  • SD and flooding effects may be limited to the controlled environment of a therapists office and may not translate to real- world experiences.
• Explaining depression- cognitive approach:

  Cognitive approach argues depression is due to irrational thoughts from maladaptive internal mental processes.