psychopathology

• behavioural characteristic is the observable actions and reactions a person exhibits
• emotional characteristics are subjective experiences and expressions of feelings

  includes the range, intensity and duration of emotions

  assess through self report, clinical interview and observation
• cognitive characteristics involve individual thoughts, beliefs and perceptions
• phobias are an irrational persistent fear
• simple phobia is the fear of specific object in the environment

  can be split into animal, injury, situational and natural phobias
• situational phobia is a type of simple phobia

  fear of a situation
• social phobia is feeling anxiety in specific social situation, causing you to feel judged, inadequate and apprehensive

  can be split into performance, interaction and generalised phobia
• adaptive fear is a natural and necessary emotional response by evolution that promotes survival

  protective function that alerts individual to potential danger so we can avoid threat
• maladaptive is an exaggerated and inappropriate fear response that is disproportionate to perceived threat

  it persists in the absence of real danger and hinders well being
• phobia characteristic

  behavioural: avoidance and panic, can lead to freezing

  emotional: excessive and unreasonable fear and anxiety

  cognitive: selective attention and irrational belief
• selective attention is where a person becomes fixated on the object they fear because they are unable to direct their attention elsewhere
• two process model is behaviourist explanation of phobias

  phobia is created by classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning
• operant conditioning maintains fear by negative reinforcement

  avoidance removes unpleasant feeling of fear, increasing the likelihood of behaviour repeating and providing no opportunity to overcome the phobia
• Watson and Rayner- Little Albert

  loud bang was unconditioned stimulus that caused unconditioned response of fear, paired repeatedly with neutral stimulus of white rat for same response, learn by association so rat become conditioned stimulus to produce conditioned response of fear

  albert generalised fear to other white furry objects
• evaluate little albert

  11 month old baby cannot provide informed consent or withdraw

  psychological harm and lifelong phobia

  could treat phobia after understanding

  case study cannot be generalised

  interpreting his reaction is subjective, crying due to hunger or fear
• behaviourist explanation of phobias ignores role of cognitions

  may develop just by irrational thinking not learning

  limited explanation whereas cognitive approach has lead to development of effective treatments like CBT
• behaviourist explanation of phobias has real world applications to treat and remove fears by systematic desensitization and flooding
• Behaviourist explanation of phobias is incomplete

  Bounton 2007 said it does not account for evolutionary factors

  Seligman 1971 said we have biological preparedness, innate predisposition to acquire certain fears as an adaptive process to protect from danger
• systematic desensitisation based on classical conditioning

  abnormality is due to learning maladaptive and dysfunctional behaviours and counter conditioning replaces it with adaptive behaviours

  requires 6-8 sessions
• systematic desensitisation has three components

  fear hierarchy, relaxation techniques and reciprocal ihibition
• fear hierarchy is where client and therapist rank phobic situation from least to most terrifying
• relaxation training is where we use breathing, muscle relaxation and mental imagery techniques to relax as deeply as possible

  can be achieved using drugs like valium

  helps cope with increasing tension of hierarchy and we can use strategies in real life
• reciprocal inhibition says two emotional states (relaxation and fear) cannot exist at the same time

  expose patient to least phobic situation whilst relaxed, move up
• flooding is where we expose individual to most phobic situation immediately so a person is unable to negatively reinforce the phobia

  through continuous exposure anxiety levels decrease
• flooding has two forms

  in vivo: actual exposure

  in vitro: imaginary exposure
• flooding can be seen as unethical as it can cause psychological harm due to the high anxiety induced which can cause physical harm like heart attacks
• treatments can be appropriate or effective

  appropriate: matched to context, suitable for situation/population

  effective: works as intended to, successful, brings positive effect
• what factors could affect appropriateness or effectiveness of treatment

  age and gender its aimed at, mental ability of patient, success rate, liked by patient, how we measure, test used, low drop out
• McGrath et Al 1990 found 75% of phobia patients were successfully treated using systematic desensitision, specifically in vivo techniques
• Gilroy et Al 2002 examined 42 patients with arachnophobia

  each treated using three, 45 minute SD sessions

  when examined three months and thirty three months later found SD group was less fearful than control group who were only taught relaxation strategies
• Wolpe 1969

  patient became intensely anxious during flooding and required hospitalisation, many provide informed consent but drop out due to extreme distress
• evaluate systematic desensitisation

  effective due to supporting research

  suitable and acceptable for a diverse range of patients

  in vitro relies on clients ability to imagine phobia, not everyone can create a vivid image

  only treats observable and measurable symptoms not cause
• evaluate flooding

  cost effective and quick

  less effective for some phobias

  research shows it can be traumatic and unethical, not appropriate for all
• depression is a mood disorder where a negative emotional state impacts a person's thoughts, perceptions and behaviour

  clinical depression is long term and affects ability to function

  depression can be unipolar or bipolar
• unipolar depression also known as major depression characterised by one constant low mood and can occur suddenly

  reactive means it is caused by external factors, endogenous means it is caused by internal factors
• bipolar depression is manic depression where an individual fluctuates from extreme high moods to extreme low moods
• characteristics of depression

  behavioural: loss of energy, change in activity and sleep, lose appetite

  emotional: low mood, feeling sad/worthless, anger, lack of interest

  cognitive: diminished ability to concentrate, attentional bias
• cognitive approach explains depression by suggesting its caused by negative thought patterns/beliefs

  all or nothing thinking, over generalisation, jump to conclusions
• Beck said depression is caused by cognitive bias, negative self schemas and negative triad
• cognitive bias is where people focus on negative aspect of situation

  distort/misinterpret information

  misperceive reality

  involves arbitrary inference, magnification/minimisation, musturbation