Psychopathology
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| What is social norms? | They are expectations that a society and culture hold about how to behave. They are implict rules of how, and how not, to behave in society. Every society has rules for behaviour based on a set of moral standards |
| What is deviating for social norms ? | Refers to behaviour which is considered undesirable and anti-social by the majoirty of society memebers. Means behaving in ways that are not in line with limplict rules of society. Breaking these rule is regarded as abnormal. |
| What is said about social norms in different cultures? | Cultural beliefs and cultural norms also influence our expectations of behaviour. This demonstrates that deviation from social norms also needs to take cultural beliefs into account. |
| What is cultural relativism? | The idea that one cannot judge behaviour properly unless it is viewed in the cultural context which is originated. |
| What does lack of cultural relativsim lead to? | Can results in the norms of the home culture being used to assess the behaviour of the individuals from another culture - this is an example of ethnocentrism. |
| What can cause social norms to change? | Depending on which situation you are in, your gener, historical period, age and culture. |
| What is a strength of devitation from social norms? | Useful definition to distinguish between desirable and undesirable behaviour. This feature is absent from the statistial infreqeuncy defintion of abnormality. The deviation from social norms takes into acocunt the effect the behaviour on others. Deviance is defined in terms of transgression of soicla rules, that are ideally established in order to help people live together harmoniously. |
| A weakness of devitation from social norms? | Social norms differ between cultures and what is considered normal in one culture may be abnormal in another. Eg: 75 different countries homosexulity is illegal and considered abnormal, even though its not everywhere else The DSM is largley based on Western social nomrs and can't be applied to all cultures, therefore there is no global stand for defining abnormal behaviour and therefore it is not standardised. |
| A weakness of deviation from social norms? | It changes with time, raises the issue of hindsight bais. Homosexulity was considered a mental illness until 1973, resulting in institution but now its considered normal. Means that historically the reliance on the defintion of social deviation could have led to violations of human rights where people were deemed abnormal To diagnose peopel on these grounds is a form of social control over minoirty groups to exclude those who couldn't conform. |
| A weakness of deviaiton from social norms ? | Someone may break a social norm it might not be deviant behaviour but the persistent recption of such behaviour could be evidence of psychological disturbance. Like someone can wear a bikini to the beach but in an office it would be abnormal, a possible indication of an underlying mental health issue. Defintion fails to offer complete explanation since it is context depended and mediated by the degree of devitiation |
| What is statistical infrequency ? | One way of deciding whether behaviour is deviant is to consider how infrequent it is. Behaviour is seen as normal if it occurs frequently (mathematically), but if it occurs relativley rearley in the population is abnormal. |
| What does statistical infrequency assume? | That all abnormal behaviour are rare, any behaviour that does not happen frequently in the general popoulation is considered statistically rare. Its a mathematical approach, in attempts to quantify abnormality. |
| Example of statistical infrequency? | People deviate from the average IQ score of 100. People who are 2 standard deviations below the average intelligence would be considered statistically infreqeunt. But this would also work for above the average intelligence. |
| What is a strength of statistical infrequency ? | The definition of abnormality isn't up to a subjective interpretation of what is considered abnormal or not. Reduces the likelihood of misinterpretating information, which can happen due subjective definitions. But it doens't take into account cultural differences but can be said that many stereotypical traits can be seen globally: gender roles |
| A strength of statistical infrequency? | Can be used to see normal/expected development in children. Intervention can be used if needed to make sure that the child is developing on the path that is expected and allow them to have a normal development. Doctors and parents can know that thier child needs and put them in a program if needed. Support children for an expected development |
| A strength of statistical infrequency? | Uses data from standardised and established tests, like IQ. Information is being collected from a reliable source and is the same for everyone High internal validity, refined data, makes statistical infrequency more trustworthy and reliable when using. |
| A weakness of statistical infrequency? | Some rare behaviour is desirable. For example a high IQ score of 130, or musically gifted people are infrequent but still desirable. Limitation of the definition because it assumes that any behaviour is abnormal and its not always the case The defintion need to identify those behaviours which are both infrequent and undesirable to avoid this pitfall. |
| What is faliure to function adequatley? | Occurs when someone is unable to cope with ordinary demands of day to day living. Can't cope with everyday life or live independently in society. Acknowledges that people will behave differently but if they can't manage basic habits its considered abnormal. |
| What does the FFA defintion say abotu distress? | Due to their faliure to cope this can cause personal suffering and distress. They may cause distress and discomfort to other people who observe their behaviour |
| What are the 5 outlines of FFA? | Unpredictability, maladaptive behaviour, personal distress, irrationality, observer discomfort |
| What is unpredictability? | Loss of control - no one knows that you'll do next, not even you. Implusive and uncontrollable behaviour |
| What is maladaptive behaviour? | You are at risk of harm/danger to yourself and/or others and going against accepted standards |
| What is personal distress? | Experiencing severe suffering and excessive emotional responses eg: distress or anxiety |
| What is irrationality? | Incomprehensibility - no one understands you; you don't even understand yourself. Unreasonable thinking and behaviour |
| What is observer discomfort? | You upset (casue distress) or frighten others with your behaviour and leave them feeling uncomfortable. |
| What is the GAF and what is it for? | Global Assessment of Functioning scale A questionnaire which measures a person's symptoms affect their day-to-day life on a scale of 0-10. Low score indicated FFA |
| What are the 4 different categories for FFA (number scores) | 90-81: good functioning in all areas of life 50-41: Serious symtpoms, impairmnet in everday life 30-21: behaviour influenced by delusions, communication impaired 10-0: persistent danger of severely huring themselves or others, inability to take care of themselves |
| What is the WHODAS? | Another way to measure FFA: World health organisation disability assessment scaled. Rate each item 1-5, overall score of 180, quantative measurement |
| What are the 6 areas of WHODAS? | 1. Understanding and communicating 2. Getting around 3. Self-care 4. Getting along with people 5. Life activites 6. Participation in society |
| A strength of FFA? | Consideratio of how the individual feels, the defition is focused on the individual and how they are managing in thier everyday life from their perspective. So if someone feels are though they are stuggling they will be deemed abnormal and get help |
| A strength of FFA? | GAF and WHODAS are scales that allow for the exent of the failure to function to be measured. This means that the decision of whether a behaviour is abnormla or not can be made in a relatively objective way |
| A strength of FFA? | FFA can be seen by other around the individual because they may not be able to hold down a job. This menas that problmes can be picked up by others and if the individual is incapble of making a decision or helping themselves others can intervene |
| A weakness of FFA? | Too much focus on the individual, it can be aruged that abnormal behaviours may not be a problem for the individual, but it may be for others around them. Eg: someone may be abnormally aggressive and not be worried by it, but their family and friends Someone may have the same score on the GAF but there will be differences in their abilities |
| A weakness of FFA? | Abnormality does not always stop the person functioning, the focus on how someone is coping of this defintion may mena that some abnormal behaviour is missed. People may appear fine to others as they fit in, but they may have distorted thinking which is causing them innter distress that they hide |
| A weakness of FFA? | The ability to cope with everyday life depends on what is seen as normal in everyday life. This varied within and across cultures. Some body clocks mean that individuals dont rise until midday but they function well at other times. Culturally it is not unusual to have siestas, or move home regularly which may be seen as abnormal. This means that the definition wasn't clear. |
| What is a phobia? | A group of mental disorders characterised by high level of anxiety in response to a particiular stimulus or group of stimuli |
| What is depression? | A mood disorder where an individual feels sad and/or lack interest in their usual activites. Includes negative thoughts, rasied or lowered activity and difficulty with concentration, sleeping, and eating. |
| What is OCD? | Anxiety disorder whereby anxiety arises from both obessions and compulsions. Cumplusions are a reponse to obessions and the person believes they will reduce anxiety |
| What is obessions? | Persistant thoughts |
| What are compulsions? | Repetitive behaviours |
| Name two emtional characterisitcs of phobias ? | Anxiety and fear |
| What is anxiety with phobias? | A emotional response of anxiety, high state of arousal. Prevents relaxation, can be long term - hard to experience positive emotion |
| What is fear with phobias? | Immediate and extremely unpleasent response. More intense, but shorter than anxiety. Usually unresonable, greater than 'normal fear' and disproportionante to any threat. |
| Name 3 behavioural characteristics of phobias? | Panic, avoidance, endurance |
| What is panic? | Invovles crying, screaming, running away. Children may frezze and have a tantrum |
| What is avoidance? | Conscious effort to not face their fears, preventing coming into contact, makes it hard in their daily life |
| What is endurance? | They choose to remain in the presense of the phobc stimulus |
| Name 3 cognitive characterisitcs of phobias? | Selective attention to the phobic stimulus, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions |
| What is selective attention to the phobic stimulus? | Keeping attention to the stimulus, gives them best chance to act quickly. But its not useful if the fear is irrational |
| What is irrational beliefs? | May hold unfounded thoughts, can't explain it and don't have a basis in reality. |
| What is cognitive distortions? | Perceptions of people with phobias may be inaccurate and unrealistic. |
| Name 3 emotional characteristics of depression? | Lowered mood, anger, lowered self-esteem |
| What is lowered mood? | Feel sad, more pronounced than daily experience, more 'worthless' and 'empty' |
| What is anger? | Experience more negative emotions than positive ones. Directed at others or self, can ldead to self-harming and aggressive behaviours |
| What is lowered self-esteem? | How much we like ourselves is reduced, can be extreme sense of self-loathing |
| Name 3 behavioural characterisitcs of depression? | Activity levels, disruption to sleep and eating behaviours, aggression and self-harm. |
| What is activity levels? | Reduced levels of energy, making from lethargic from work, education, social life. Sometimes can't get out of bed. Or oppostive with psychomotor agitiation, struggle to relax |
| What is disruption to sleep and eating behaviours? | Changes in sleeping habits, reduced or increased sleep. Reduced or increased appetitie. |
| What is aggression and self-harm? | Often irritable, verbally or physically aggressive. Knock-on effect, can lead to physical aggression against the self. |
| Name 3 cognitive characteristics of depression? | Poor concentration, attending to and dwelling on the negative, absolutist thinking |
| What is poor concentration? | Unable to stick with a task they can usualy do, hard to make decisions that would normally stright foward. Interfere with individual's work |
| What is attending to and dwelling on the negative? | Inclined to pay more attention to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positives. Bias towards recalling unhappy events |
| What is absolutist thinking? | Tend to think in terms of a situation being all good or all bad. Tends to see things as an absolute disaster. |
| Name 3 emtional characteristics of OCD? | Anxiety and distress, accompanying depression, guilt and disgust |
| What is anxiety and distress | Particularly unpleasent emotional experience because of obsessions and complusions. Obsessive thoughts are unpleasent, frightening can be overwhelming. Urge to repeat behaviour causes anxiety. |
| What is accompanying depression? | Often accompanied by depression, complusive behaviours bring some relief from anxiety, but only temporary. |
| What is guilt and disgust? | Negative emotions like irrational guilt. Minor moral issues of disgust from external factors or self. |
| Name 2 behavioural characterisitcs of OCD? | Complusions are repetitive, avoidance |
| What is complusions are reptitive? | Compelled to repeart a behaviour, like repetitive counting and praying - complusions can reduce anxiety. Majority of people with OCD have complusive behaviours that they have to try to manage to deal with anxiety. Only 10% of people with OCD don't show complusive behaviours |
| What is avoidance? | Keeping away from a situation that can trigger their anxiety. But this can interfere with regular life. |
| Name 3 cognitive characterisitcs of OCD? | Obsessive thoughts, insight into excessive anxiety, cognitive coping strategies |
| What is obsessive thoughts? | 90% of ppl with OCD have obsessive thoughts, they vary but they are always unpleasent. It can even be impluses to hurt someone |
| What is cognitive coping strategies? | To respond to obsession they adopt cogitive coping strategies, like religion to have get over obsessie guilt. Can manage anxiety but will make them appear abnormal and can distract from everyday tasks. |
| What is insight to excessive anxiety? | Aware of their irrational obsessions and complusions, they know its not rational, they tend to be hypervigilant, maintain constant alertness and keep attention focused on potential hazards. They might have thoughts of catastrophic consequences if their anxieties were to come true. |
| What are the key principles of behaviourism? | Psychologist follow the learning approach, believe that humans are born as blank slates, everything is shaped by interaction with the envrionment, no response is set. |
| What is classical conditioning? | We learn by association when 2 things happen at the same time (or happens just before another) |
| What is operant conditioning? | We learn by consequences of either being rewarded or punished |
| What is the social learning theory? | We learn by observing and imitating role models |
| What are the 2 parts of Mowrer's 2 process model of how phobias are explained? | 1. Phobias are initiated through classical conditioning (association) 2. Phobias are maintained through operant conditioning (consequence) |
| What is a unconditioned stimulus? | Event/object in the environment that will cause the physiological response |
| What is a unconditioned response? | Uncontrollable physiological reaction/reflex a response to the stimulus |
| What is a neutral stimulus? | Previously un-associated stimulus to the response |
| What is a conditioned stimulus? | After learning the association has taken place |
| What is a conditioned resposne? | After learning the assoctiation has taken place |
| What is the little Albert experiment - Watson and Rayner? | Wanted a fear response in a non-anxious baby. Pairng a rat which the baby was fine with at first, to a loud bang. After a number of pairings, the baby was scared of the rat and similar characterisitcs of a rat (generlisation) |
| Name the different labls of the stimulus' and reactions with Watson and Ryner? | Neutral stimulus - the rat Unconditioned stimulus - the bang Unconditioned reaction - baby crying Conditioned stimulus - the rat Conditioned response - baby crying |
| How are phobias maintained? | They are maintained by operant conditioning. The behaviour is reinforced or punished, the beahviour is reinforced which means it is repeated. But behaviour that is punished is terminated. |
| What is positive reinforcement? | Rewarding the behaviour by giving them something to encourage this beahaviour in the future. (getting chocolate when you are done with work) |
| What is positive punishment? | Add an unpleasent stimulus to the environment which will decrease the frequency of the beahviour (getting a dentention) |
| What is negative reinforcement? | Removing of the stimulus which will lead to an increase of behaviour. (not attending class bc you haven't done the work) |
| What is negative punishment? | You get something taken away from you, will lead to a decrease of behaviour. |
| A strength of the behavioural explanation of phobias? | -Watson and Ryner, demonstrated classical conditioning with a formation of a phobia with a rat when paired with a loud noise to make a conditioned reaction -Supports the idea of the 2 process model, it will form a phobia as well as generlisation occuring with stimulus phobic stimulus -Results are hard to generlise though due to the case study, possibly unique behaviours. Need to apply with caution. |
| A strength of the behavioural explanation of phobias? | -Therapy -The ideas have have been used to develop treatments, like systematic desensitisation and flooding. -Systematic desensitiation: helps to unlearn their fears using principals of classical conditioning. Flooding: prevents people from avoiding their phobia by stopping negative reinforcement. -Have been successfully used to help people, providing furthur support for real life application and its effectiveness |
| A weakness of the behavioural explanation of phobias? | - Doesn't provide complete explanation, does not consider genetics -Seligman aruges that animals and humans are genetically programmed to learn an association between a potentially life threatening stimulus and fear. -Would have been adaptive to repidly avoid acient fears like height and snakes, bc theses would have been dangerous to us in our evolutionary past. -Innate predisposition to certain phobias, biological preparedness and casts doubt to two-process model - suggests that there is more to phobias to classical conditioning |
| A weakness of the behavioural explanation for phobias? | -Ignores the role of cognition -Behaviours may develop through irrational thinking, not jsust learning through avoidance and assocation. Eg: clautrophobic people may think 'I am going to get trapped and suffocate in the lift' which is an irrational thought not taken into account. -The cognitive approach has lead to CBT, a more succesful treatment compared to the behaviourist treatments -Means that the 2 process model does not completely explain, as well as treat, phobias as well. |
| What are the 2 aims of behavioural treatment? | 1. Reduce phobic anxiety through the principle of classical conditioning, whereby a new resposne to the stimulus is paired with relaxation instead of anxiety - countercounditioning 2. Reduce phobic anxiety through the principle of operant conditioning whereby there is no option for avoidance behaviour |
| What did Wolpe say about systematic desensitisation? | Ther 2 competing emotions cannot occur at the same time, so if a fear is replaced with relaxation, the fear cannot continue. Allows the person to relax in the presense of the phobic stimulus. |
| What is reciprocal inhibition? | The person feels afraid and relaxed at the same time, so one emotion prevents the other. |
| What are the three steps for systematic desensitisation? | Anxiety hierarchy, relaxation techniques, exposure |
| What is anxiety hierarchy? | The construction by the patient and the therapist. This is a stepped approach to getting the person to face the object or situation of their phobia from least to most frightening. |