Psychological Disorders: Treatment (week 12)

Practice vocabulary flashcards covering the aetiology, models of abnormality, stress-coping theories, and therapeutic treatments presented in Lecture 12.

Psychodynamic / Relational Model

A model of abnormality asserting that early relationships shape expectations of self and others, unconscious emotional processes and defence mechanisms reduce short-term threat, and symptoms reflect broader relational and personality patterns.

Defence Mechanisms

Psychological processes within the psychodynamic framework that reduce emotional threat in the short term to protect the ego from experiencing intolerable exposure and shame.

Socio-cultural Model

A framework examining how external environments, culture, material conditions, and societal institutions (such as families, whānau, peers, and schools) shape the presentation, understanding, and recognition of psychological distress.

Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping

A framework developed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) proposing that stress emerges from the ongoing transaction between environmental demands and a person's perceived or available resources.

Primary Appraisal

The initial evaluation phase in Lazarus and Folkman's stress model where an individual determines whether an encountered stressor is irrelevant, benign, or stressful (classified as harm or loss, threat, or challenge).

Secondary Appraisal

The evaluation phase in Lazarus and Folkman's stress model assessing available coping options and resources to manage a perceived threat, resulting in either positive stress or distress.

Diathesis-Stress Model

An integrative model proposing that psychological disorders develop when an underlying biological or genetic vulnerability (diathesis) interacts with environmental stress exceeding a specific threshold.

Protective Factors

Internal or external resources, such as supportive relationships and adaptive coping mechanisms, that act to reduce vulnerability and prevent a person from crossing the threshold for a disorder.

Code of Ethics for NZ Psychologists

An ethical framework consisting of four core principles: Respect for Dignity of Persons and Peoples, Responsible Caring, Integrity in Relationships, and Social Justice and Social Responsibility.

Pharmacology

A biological treatment method utilizing medications that act on the central nervous system to alter biological processes and treat behavioural abnormalities.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A controversial biological intervention that induces a seizure via an electric shock to the head; used for major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, especially when treatment-resistant.

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

A collaborative, directive, and typically short-term psychotherapy derived from behavioural and cognitive principles that targets current maladaptive behaviours and dysfunctional thoughts.

Behavioural Therapy

A therapeutic approach focusing on maladaptive behaviour to modify actions, antecedents, or consequences using techniques like relaxation, systematic desensitization, token economies, and contingency contracts.

Cognitive Therapy

A therapeutic approach aimed at identifying automatic, irrational thoughts and changing dysfunctional cognitions into more realistic evaluations while clarifying the relationship between thoughts and behaviours.

Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)

A cognitive therapy developed by Albert Ellis based on the premise that people upset themselves by their irrational beliefs rather than being directly upset by external events.

A-B-C Theory of Dysfunctional Behaviour

A model illustrating that an Activating event ($A$) interacts with a Belief ($B$) to produce an emotional or behavioural Consequence ($C$).

Cognitive Restructuring

The therapeutic process of guiding a client to treat negative automatic thoughts as testable hypotheses and replace dysfunctional cognitions with realistic, balanced alternatives.

Thought Records

A CBT tool where clients document the situation, rate mood, record automatic thoughts, evaluate supporting and non-supporting evidence, formulate a balanced thought, and re-rate their emotional state.

Systematic Desensitisation

A behavioural technique where a client gradually confronts an imagined fear-inducing stimulus while in a physiological state that inhibits anxiety, such as deep muscle relaxation.

All-or-Nothing Thinking

A cognitive distortion (also known as black-and-white thinking) where experiences are evaluated in extreme, binary terms, such as believing that anything short of perfection represents complete failure.

Over-generalizing

A cognitive distortion where an individual identifies an ongoing pattern or draws overly broad conclusions based on a single negative event.

Mental Filter

A cognitive distortion involving exclusive attention to negative evidence, such as noticing personal failures while completely disregarding successes.

Disqualifying the Positive

A cognitive distortion where a person discounts good things that have occurred or positive actions they have performed by declaring that they do not count.

Jumping to Conclusions

A cognitive distortion encompassing mind reading (presuming to know what others think) and fortune telling (predicting negative outcomes in the future without evidence).

Magnification and Minimization

A cognitive distortion where an individual blows situations out of proportion (catastrophizing) or inappropriately shrinks an event or characteristic to make it seem insignificant.

Emotional Reasoning

A cognitive distortion where a person assumes that because they feel a particular emotional state, their corresponding thought must be objectively true.

Personalization

A cognitive distortion involving taking total blame for an event that was not entirely one's fault, or conversely blaming others for an event that was one's own responsibility.

Common Factors

Shared curative components found across all effective psychotherapies, divided into support factors, opportunities for learning, and resulting new behaviours.

Eclectic Psychotherapy

A treatment approach wherein a clinician combines various techniques from multiple theoretical orientations to fit the individual needs of the client.

Integrative Psychotherapy

A treatment approach where a clinician selects and synthesizes elements from different therapy orientations to form a unified, unique theoretical and clinical framework.