Psychopathology

AQA A-level Psychology: Psychopathology

What are the four definitions of abnormality?

Statistical Infrequency, Deviation from Social Norms, Failure to Function Adequately, Deviation from Ideal Mental Health.

Define: Statistical Infrequency

Abnormality is defined as the extreme ends of a normal distribution curve - based on data of what is unusual.

What is an example of Statistical Infrequency in defining abnormality?

An IQ score below 70 is statistically infrequent, with approximately 2% of individuals, which may result in a diagnosis of 'intellectual disability disorder.'

What are two strengths of Statistical Infrequency?

Real-World Application - objective measurement with clear cut threshold. Beck Depressive Index is a self-report questionnaire used to help diagnose depression.

Implications - Treatment can be accessed.

What are three limitations of Statistical Infrequency?

Implications - psychological distress, restriction of independence.

Discrimination - social stigma and human rights abuse.

Temporal Relativism - the stats need to be up-to-date and stats are subject to change.

Define: Deviation from Social Norms

Varying from the social behaviours and standards which underlie the norms.

Give an example of Deviation from Social Norms.

Homosexuality was considered abnormal and a mental disorder by societal standards until about the 1980s.

What are two strengths of Deviation from Social Norms?

Real-World Application - The DSM-5 outlines standard classifications of mental disorders.

Implications - treatment may help a person re-enter society and function within it.

What are three limitations of Deviation from Social Norms?

Implications - Socially sensitive, increases the risk of loneliness through alienation.

Discrimination - Alienation and human rights abuse. May exacerbate stereotypes.

Temporal Relativism - Social norms are constantly changing (homosexuality)

The ____ is a diagnostic book used in America of standard classification of mental disorders.

DSM-5

Define: Failure to Function Adequately

The inability to cope with everyday living standards causing personal distress or distress to others. Can cause personal distress, irrationality, or violation of moral standards.

What are some suggested features of Failure to Function Adequately?

Personal distress, maladaptive behavior, unpredictability, irrationality, overt discomfort, and violation of moral standards.

What are two strengths of Failure to Function Adequately?

Real-World Application - Global Assessment of Functionality rates how serious a mental illness may be by measuring how much the symptoms affect day-to-day life.

Implication - Diagnosis and treatment will improve day-to-day life.

What are three limitations of Failure to Function Adequately?

Implications - Socially sensitive, distressing information may negatively affect day-to-day life.

Discrimination - Can lead to stereotyping (travellers)

Cultural Relativism - What is adequate practice in one culture may be inadequate in another. FFA cannot be a universal definition.

Define: Deviation from Ideal Mental Health

Positive definition of abnormality as the absence of qualities of ideal mental health.

What are some features of Ideal Mental Health according to Jahoda?

Self-attitudes, personal growth, integration, autonomy, accurate perception of reality, and environmental mastery.

What is a strength of Deviation from Ideal Mental Health?

Implications - Therapists can use this approach to holistically and positively aid a person. Diagnosis and treatment.

What are three limitations of Deviation from Ideal Mental Health?

Implications - Disheartening if one cannot reach “ideal” mental health due to external factors.

Discrimination - Some negativity can be positive otherwise stereotyping will worsen. (Boys don’t cry)

Cultural Relativism - Collectivist vs Individualist cultures have different ideals and value different criteria more.

What is a phobia?

A persistent anxiety disorder characterized by irrational and disproportionate fear that interferes with daily living.

What are the top 5 phobias in the UK?

Social Phobia, Agoraphobia, Emetophobia, Erythrophobia, Amaxophobia.

Define: Behavioural

Characteristics which are observable actions, patterns or traits.

Define: Emotional

Characteristics based in intense feelings.

Define: Cognitive

Ones ability to think, reason, and extract meaning from experiences.

According to the behavioral approach, how are phobias acquired?

Phobias are learned through classical conditioning, through association between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.

What is the two-process model by Mowrer (1947)?

It explains that phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning (negative reinforcement).

What is Systematic Desensitisation?

A gradual process of counterconditioning that aims to replace a fear response with relaxation through an anxiety hierarchy and exposure.

What is Flooding in the context of phobia treatment?

Inescapable exposure to the feared stimuli until anxiety or fear diminishes, based on the principle of extinction.

Define: Depression

A mood disorder affecting emotional state, a constant feeling of sadness and loss of interest, which stops one doing their normal activities.

What is the cognitive explanation for depression according to Aaron Beck?

Depression is linked to faulty information processing, negative self-schemas, and the negative triad.

What is Ellis's ABC model in the study of depression?

A: Activating event, B: Beliefs, C: Consequence—illustrating how irrational beliefs can lead to emotional consequences like depression.

What is Psychomotor Agitation?

Restlessness leading to movement which serves no purpose.

Define: OCD

Obsessions and compulsions associated with repetitive intrusive thoughts and anxiety reducing behaviours.

What are Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) used for?

To increase serotonin levels in the brain, helping to alleviate symptoms of OCD and depression.

What are the common side effects of SSRIs?

Headaches, nausea, and insomnia.

What is the significance of the diathesis-stress model in explaining psychological disorders?

It highlights the interaction between genetic vulnerability (diathesis) and environmental stressors in the development of disorders.

What is meant by the term 'nomothetic' in psychological treatment approaches?

A nomothetic approach involves establishing general laws or principles applicable to the majority, as opposed to focusing on individual differences.

Which approach focuses on mental processes stating that all behaviours are learned and acquired through interactions with the environment?

Behaviourist Approach

What is the difference between classical and operant conditioning?

Classical conditioning is the act of learning through association whereas operant conditioning is learning through consequences.

Negative reinforcement strengths behaviour by ______ something ______.

Removing, horrible

Proposed by Seligman (1971) ___________ is the innate predisposition to acquire certain phobias.

Biological Preparedness

What is counterconditioning?

Reassociating the conditioned stimulus with a new response, replacing the fear.

Define: The Anxiety Hierarchy

A list of anxiety enducing situations regarding the phobic stimuli.

Define: Relaxation

Calming deep muscle techniques, eg meditation.

Define: Reciprocal Inhibition

Working through the list (Anxiety Hierarchy) whilst practising relaxation.

What is extinction?

Fear responses cannot be sustained and will eventually fall.

What is the term used to describe drop-out rates?

Attrition

What is symptom substitution?

The phobic stimuli is replaced instead of cured.

Which approach focuses on studying mental processes, including how people perceive, think, and remember events?

Cognitive Approach

What is a self-schema?

The category of information about ones self.

What is the negative triad?

The entrapment in a cycle of maladaptive thinking about oneself, the world, and the future.

What is musturbatory thinking?

The potentially addictive habit of absolutionist thinking or unchecked use of “must” or “should”

Define: Utopianism

The belief that life should be fair.

What is Behaviour Activation?

A deliberate practice of certain behaviours to help “activate” positive and rational beliefs through homework.

Irrational thoughts are patterns of thinking that are _____, _______ of _____. Often based on incorrect or no information.

Illogical, distortion of reality.

Which approach focusses on factors such as genetics, biochemistry, neurological structure which influence personality and psychology?

Biological Approach

Define: Polygenic

Influenced by two or more genes.

Define: Aetiologically heterogeneous

A number of combinations of genes that lead to the same disorder

What are neural explanations for OCD?

Orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) is linked with logical thinking and decision making. Abnormal OFC is linked with OCD.

Basal Ganglia is linked with processing unpleasant emotions and regulates worry. Abnormal Basal Ganglia is linked with OCD.

What type of therapy uses medication to treat disorders such as OCD?

Drug Therapy

Define: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)

An antidepressant which blocks the reuptake of serotonin in the pre-synaptic neuron. This allows the post-synaptic neural to absorb more serotonin, relieving the effects of OCD.

Support for Phobia Explanation: Watson and Rayner (1920)

Little Albert Study induced a phobia through classical conditioning

Limitation for Phobia Explanation: Bregman (1934)

Failed to condition a phobia using Watson and Rayner’s methods.

Support for Phobia Treatment: Wolitzky-Taylor et al (2008)

Support: Meta-analysis of exposure-therapy in gynophobia (dogs)

Support for Phobia Explanation: Öst (1987)

People may not remember the incident but there was a specific activating incident

Limitation for Phobia Explanation: Bouton (2007)

Pointed out evolutionary factors.

Limitation for Phobia Explanation: DiNardo (1990)

Suggested sufferers (phobias) cannot remember having a related bad experience.

Support for Phobia treatment: McGrath et al (1990)

75% of people with phobias were treated by SD especially in vivo (live) rather than in vitro (imagining).

Support for Phobia treatment: Choy et al (2007)

People’s imagination weren’t strong enough to use solely in SD. In vivo was more effective.

Support for Phobia Treatment: Wolpe (1973)

Flooding successfully help a girl who was afraid of cars.

Support for Phobia Treatment: Öst (1989)

Flooding was 90% successful after one session and was maintained for 4 years

Limitation for Phobia treatment: Schumacher et al (2015)

Found both therapists and clients felt flooding was significantly more stressful than other therapies

Limitation for Phobia treatment: Wolpe (1969)

Found flooding was so traumatic it could lead to hospitalisation.

Aaron Beck (1967)

Depression - Faulty thinking, Negative self-schemas, negative triad.

Albert Ellis (1955)

ABC Model of Depression

Support for Depression Explanation: Boury et al (2001)

Depressives more likely to negatively misinterpret information and feel hopeless.

Support for Depression Explanation: Bates et al (1999)

Gave depressives negative statements to read and found that their symptoms worsened.

Limitation for Depression Explanation: Alloy and Abrahmson (1979)

Suggested that individuals with depression may actually be realists

Limitation for Depression Explanation: Zhang et al (2005)

Found that there is a gene for low serotonin that is ten times more likely to be found in those suffering from depression.

Support for Depression Treatment: Ellis (1957)

90% of clients successfully treated depression after an average of 27 sessions.

Support for Depression Treatment: Lewis and Lewis (2016)

CBT was as effective as antidepressants paired with behavioural therapies for cases for bad depression.

Limitation for Depression Treatment: Ali et al (2017)

After over a year, half of clients who used CBT relapsed.

Support for Depression Treatment: March et al (2007)

After 36 weeks, the improvement rates showed that CBT was as effective as antidepressants, but marginally higher when paired together.

Limitation for Depression Treatment: Cuijpers et al (2013)

CBT worked best when paired with antidepressants.

Support for Depression Treatment: Taylor et al (2008)

CBT was effective for people with learning difficulties.

Limitation for Depression Treatment: Strumey (2005)

Talking therapies were not suitable for people with learning difficulties.

Support for OCD Explanation: Lewis (1936)

OCD is correlated with genetics, as of his patients 37% had parents with OCD compared to 2% prevalence.

Support/Limitation for OCD Explanation: Nestadt et al (2010)

68% of MZ twins shared OCD and only 31% of DZ did. Suggesting other factors need to be considered.

Limitation for OCD Explanation: Cromer et al (2007)

Environmental factors have a massive impact on OCD.

Support for OCD Explanation: Comer et al (1998)

OFC and BG malfunction with low serotonin levels.

Support for OCD Explanation: Rauch et al (1994)

PET scans showed over activation of the BG to be linked with OCD.

Support for OCD Treatment: Soomro et al (2008)

Reviewed 17 studies of the use of SSRIs with OCD patients and found them to be more effective than placebos.

Limitation for OCD Treatment: Koran et al (2007)

CBT is more effective long term as it treats the cause and not the effects but drug therapies are effective short term.

Limitation for OCD Treatment: Maina et al (2001)

Patients often relapse fairly quickly after stopping drug therapies.

Define: Anhedonia

Lack of pleasure from enjoyable activities.

What is an emotional characteristic of Phobias?

Persistent, disproportionate, response of anxiety and fear.

What are behavioural characteristic of Phobias?

Endurance - remaining in the presence of the phobic stimulus with continued high anxiety.

Panic - Crying, screaming, or running away.

Avoidance

What are cognitive characteristics of Phobias?

Selective Attention - inability to stop looking at the stimulus.

Irrational Belief

What is an emotional characteristic of Depression?

Low mood - feelings of worthlessness, hopeless, guilt.

Anger - directed at themselves or others.

Reduced self-esteem - self-loathing.

What are behavioural characteristic of Depression?

Shift in activity levels - some are lethargic, some become agitated.

Displays of irritability or verbal aggression - may be inwardly directed.

Sleeping and eating patterns become disrupted.

What are cognitive characteristics of Depression?

Negative thoughts - often irrational.

Poor concentration - poor decision making processes.

Negative view of the world - absolutist thinking.