PSYB32 TERMS (Midterm 1 chapter 1-4)

Introduction to clinical Psychology

Abnormal Behaviour

**Patterns of emotion, thought, and action deemed pathological for one or more of the following reasons: infrequent occurrence, violation of norms, personal distress, disability or dysfunction, and unexpectedness**

Accountability

A requirement that Canada's health care system and provinces be held responsible for the quality of the care provided as part of a new Health Care Act, as recommended in the Romanow report.

Assessment

Finding out what is wrong with a person, what may have caused a problem or problems, and what steps may be taken to improve the person's condition

Asylums

Refuges established in western Europe in the fifteenth century to confine and provide for the mentally ill; the forerunners of the mental hospital

Bedlam

A scene or place involving a wild uproar or confusion. The term is derived from the scenes at Bethlehem Hospital in London, where unrestrained groups of mentally ill people interacted with each other.

Canadian Mental Health Association

A national organization that provides information about mental illness and acts as an advocate for mentally ill people

Cathartic Method

A national organization that provides information about mental illness and acts as an advocate for mentally ill people

Clinical Psychologists

An individual who has earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology or a Psy.D. and whose training has included an internship in a mental hospital or clinic.

Clinicians

A national organization that provides information about mental illness and acts as an advocate for mentally ill people

Community psychology

An approach to therapy that emphasizes prevention and the seeking out of potential difficulties rather than waiting for troubled individuals to initiate consultation. The location for professional activities tends to be in the person's natural surroundings rather than in the therapist's office. See also prevention

Community treatment order

**A legal tool that specifies the terms of treatment that must be adhered to in order for a mentally ill person to be released and live in the community. Recent court decisions emphasize the intent of protecting the mentally ill person**

Counselling psychologist

A doctoral-level mental health professional whose training is similar to that of a clinical psychologist, though usually with less emphasis on research and severe psychopathology

deinstitutionalization

The increasing tendency for treatment to take place in the community, perhaps on an outpatient basis, rather than having patients reside in a public institution, such as a provincial mental hospital

demonology

The doctrine that a person's abnormal behaviour is caused by an autonomous evil spirit

diagnosis

The determination that a patient's set of symptoms or problems indicates a particular disorder.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID)

A rare dissociative disorder in which two or more fairly distinct and separate personalities are present within the same individual, each with his or her own memories, relationships, and behaviour patterns, with only one of them dominant at any given time. Formerly called “multiple personality disorder.”

evidence based- treatment

Evidence-based treatment Treatments and interventions that have been shown to be effective according to controlled experimental research.

exorcism

The casting out of evil spirits by ritualistic chanting or torture.

general paresis

Mental illness characterized by paralysis and “insanity” that typically led to death within five years. Now known to be caused by syphilis of the brain.

germ theory of diseases

The general view in medicine that disease is caused by infection of the body by minute organisms and viruses.

medicare

The system of health care in Canada.

mental health literacy

The knowledge that a person develops about mental illness, including its causes and treatment.

moral treatment

A therapeutic regimen, introduced by Pinel during the French Revolution, whereby mental patients were released from their restraints and were treated with compassion and dignity rather than with contempt and denigration.

normal curve

As applied in psychology, the bell-shaped distribution of a measurable trait depicting most people in the middle and few at the extremes.

prescriptive authority

The right to prescribe drugs. The current controversy is the extent to which psychologists should have the right to prescribe drugs even though this is usually restricted to medical doctors and, in some cases, nurse practitioners.

prevention

Efforts to reduce the incidence of new cases of psychological disorder. Primary prevention comprises efforts in community psychology to reduce the incidence of new cases of psychological disorder by such means as altering stressful living conditions and genetic counselling; secondary prevention includes efforts to detect disorders early, so that they will not develop into full-blown, perhaps chronic, disabilities; and tertiary prevention attempts to reduce the long-term consequences of having a disorder, equivalent in most respects to therapy. See also community psychology.

provincial psychiatric hospital

A facility where chronic patients are treated. Such hospitals provide protection, but treatment is often custodial and may involve little psychosocial treatment.

psychiatrists

A physician (MD) who has taken specialized post-doctoral training, called a residency, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders.

psychoactive drugs

Chemical compounds having a psychological effect that alters mood or thought process. Valium is an example.

psychoanalyst

A therapist who has taken specialized post-doctoral training in psychoanalysis after earning an MD or a Ph.D. degree.

psychogenesis

Development from psychological origins, as distinguished from somatic origins. Contrast with somatogenesis.

psychopathology

The field concerned with the nature and development of mental disorders.

psychotherapy

A primarily verbal means of helping troubled individuals change their thoughts, feelings, and behaviour to reduce distress and to achieve greater life satisfaction. See also insight therapiesand behaviour therapy.

schizophrenia

A group of psychotic disorders characterized by major disturbances in thought, emotion, and behaviour; disordered thinking in which ideas are not logically related; faulty perception and attention; bizarre disturbances in motor activity; flat or inappropriate emotions; and reduced tolerance for stress in interpersonal relations. The patient withdraws from people and reality, often into a fantasy life of delusions and hallucinations.

self-stigma

The tendency for distressed people to internalize negative views of the self for not being well-adjusted. In essence, people high in self-stigma are seeing themselves according to negative stereotypes.

social worker

A mental health professional who holds a master of social work (M.S.W.) degree.

somatogenesis

Development from bodily origins, as distinguished from psychological origins. Contrast with psychogenesis.

stereotyping

A fixed belief that typically involves a negative generalization about a group or class of people. Members of the general public often endorse a number of negative beliefs about mentally ill people, and thus engage in stereotyping

stigmatisation

A reduction in the status of a group of people, such as mentally ill people, due to perceived deficiencies.

syndrome

A group or pattern of symptoms that tend to occur together in a particular disease.

transinstitutionalization

The tendency to reduce the number of people in psychiatric hospitals by transferring them to other institutions. Most typically, this results in increasing the number of people with mental health problems in general hospitals.

trepanning

The act of making a surgical opening in a living skull. This act was sometimes performed because of the belief that it would allow evil spirits to leave the body

action (beheavioural) therapies

A term sometimes applied to behavioural therapies because they involve work on behaviour as opposed to work on dreams or transference, as occurs in psychodynamic therapies.

Adoptees methods

Research method that studies children who were adopted and reared completely apart from their disordered parents, thereby eliminating the influence of being raised by disordered parents.A

Assertion training

Behaviour therapy procedures that attempt to help a person more easily express thoughts, wishes, beliefs, and legitimate feelings of resentment or approval

authoritarian parenting

A highly controlling and rigid form of parenting typically linked with substantial adjustment problems.

authoritative parenting

A positive form of parenting style involving controlling, directive behaviour that is supported by a sound rationale. It is a style typically associated with positive adjustment.

aversive conditioning

A process believed to underlie the effectiveness of aversion therapy.

behavioural genetics

The study of individual differences in behaviour that are attributable to differences in genetic make up.

behavioural therapy

A branch of psychotherapy narrowly conceived as the application of classical and operant conditioning to the alteration of clinical problems, but more broadly conceived as applied experimental psychology in a clinical context. Also called behaviour modification.

behavioural (learning) paradigm

An orientation that is based on the notion that abnormal behaviour is acquired based on behaviours that receive reinforcement or punishment.

behaviourism

The school of psychology associated with Watson, who proposed that observable behaviour, not consciousness, is the proper subject matter of psychology. Currently, many who consider themselves behaviourists do use mediational concepts, provided they are firmly anchored to observables.

biological paradigm

A broad theoretical view that holds that mental disorders are caused by some aberrant somatic process or defect.

biopsychosocial paradigm

A paradigm that suggests that all normal and abnormal behaviour is caused by an interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors.

brief therapy

Time-limited psychotherapy, usually ego-analytic in orientation and lasting no more than 25 sessions.

classical conditioning

A basic form of learning, also called“Pavlovian conditioning,” in which a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with another stimulus (called the unconditioned stimulus, UCS) that naturally elicits a certain desired response (called the unconditioned response, UCR). After repeated trials the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus(CS) and evokes the same or a similar response, now called the conditioned response(CR).

client- centred therapy

A humanistic-existential insight therapy, developed by Rogers, which emphasizes the importance of the therapist's understanding the client's subjective experiences and assisting the client to gain more awareness of current motivations for behaviour. The goal is not only to reduce anxieties but also to foster actualization of the client's potential.

cognition

The process of knowing; the thinking, judging, reasoning, and planning activities of the human mind. Behaviour is now often explained as depending on these processes.

cognitive paradigm

The general view that people can best be understood by studying how they perceive and structure their experiences.

cognitive restructuring

Any behaviour therapy procedure that attempts to alter the manner in which a client thinks about life so that he or she changes overt behaviour and emotions.

cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT)

Behaviour therapy that incorporates theory and research on cognitive processes such as thoughts, perceptions, judgements, self-statements, and tacit assumptions. A blend of both the cognitive and behavioural paradigms.

concordance

As applied in behaviour genetics, the similarity in psychiatric diagnosis or in other traits within a pair of twins.

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counterconditioning

Relearning achieved by eliciting a new response in the presence of a particular stimulus.

countertransference

Feelings that the psychoanalyst unconsciously directs to the client, stemming from his or her own emotional vulnerabilities and unresolved conflicts.

cultural diversity

The differences that exist in an area or region due to the heterogeneity and varying backgrounds of the members of that region.

cumulative risk

The combined susceptibility due to multiple risk or vulnerability factors.

deep brain stimulation

A procedure used to treat various chronic mental health and health conditions that involves planting battery-operated electrodes in the brain that deliver low-level electrical impulses.

defence mechanism

In psychoanalytic theory, reality-distorting strategies unconsciously adopted to protect the ego from anxiety.

denial

Defence mechanism in which a thought, feeling, or action is disavowed by the person.

diathesis-stress paradigm

As applied in psychopathology, a view that assumes that individuals predisposed toward a particular mental disorder will be particularly affected by stress and will then manifest abnormal behaviour.

differential susceptibility

The tendency for the same factor to act as a vulnerability factor when experiencing stress and negative outcome experiences but also act as a protective factor when experiencing favourable conditions (e.g., interpersonal sensitivity is a risk factor when being criticized and a resilience factor when being praised).

discriminative stimulus

An event that informs an organism that if a particular response is made, reinforcement will follow.

displacement

A defence mechanism whereby an emotional response is unconsciously redirected from an object or concept perceived as dangerous to a substitute less threatening to the ego.

dizygotic (DZ) teind

Birth partners who have developed from separate fertilized eggs and who are only 50% alike genetically, no more so than siblings born from different pregnancies. Also called “fraternal twins.” Contrast with monozygotic (MZ) twins.

dream Analysis

A key psychoanalytic technique in which the unconscious meanings of dream material are uncovered.

eclecticsm

In psychology, the view that more is to be gained by employing concepts and techniques from various theoretical systems than by restricting oneself to a single approach.

ego

In psychoanalytic theory, the predominantly conscious part of the personality, responsible for decision-making and for dealing with reality.

ego analysis

An important set of modifications of classical psychoanalysis, based on a conception of the human being as having a stronger, more autonomous ego with gratifications independent of id satisfactions. Also called “ego psychology.”

extinction

The elimination of a classically conditioned response by omitting the unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning, the elimination of the conditioned response by omitting reinforcement.

family method

A research strategy in behaviour genetics in which the frequency of a trait or of abnormal behaviour is determined in relatives who have varying percentages of shared genetic background.

free association

A key psychoanalytic procedure in which the client is encouraged to give free rein to his or her thoughts and feelings, verbalizing whatever comes into the mind without monitoring its content. The assumption is that over time, repressed material will come forth for examination by the client and psychoanalyst.

genes

An ultramicroscopic area of the chromosome. The gene is the smallest physical unit of the DNA molecule that carries a piece of hereditary information.

genotype

An individual's unobservable, genetic constitution; the totality of genes possessed by an individual. Compare with phenotype

healthy immigrant effect

The phenomenon that immigrants have comparatively lower rates of health problems than Canadian-born members of the population

humanistic therapies

Insight psychotherapies that emphasize the individual's subjective experiences, free will, and ever-present ability to decide on a new life course.

id

In psychoanalytic theory, that part of the personality present at birth, composed of all the energy of the psyche, and expressed as biological urges that strive continually for gratification.

index cases (probands)

The person who in a genetic investigation bears the diagnosis or trait in which the investigator is interested.

insight therapies

Any psychotherapy that assumes that people become disordered because they do not adequately understand what motivates them, especially when their needs and drives conflict

interpersonal therapy (IPT)

A psychodynamic psychotherapy that focuses on the client's interactions with others and that directly teaches how better to relate to others.

interpretation

In psychoanalysis, a key procedure in which the psychoanalyst points out to the client where resistance exists and what certain dreams and verbalizations reveal about impulses repressed in the unconscious; more generally, any statement by a therapist that construes the client's problem in a new way.

introsepction

A procedure whereby trained subjects are asked to report on their conscious experiences. This was the principal method of study in early twentieth-century psychology.

irrational beliefs

Self-defeating assumptions that are assumed by rational-emotive therapists to underlie psychological distress

latent content

In dreams, the presumed true meaning hidden behind the manifest content.

law of effect

A principle of learning that holds that behaviour is acquired by virtue of its consequences.

libido

In Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the instinctual drives of the id, primarily sexual in nature.

linkage analysis

A technique in genetic research whereby occurrence of a disorder in a family is evaluated alongside a known genetic marker.

medical model

A conceptual model that maintains that dysfunction stems from internal biological processes and factors within the individual. The medical model is more likely to reflect psychiatry than psychology. Also called disease model.

modelling

Learning by observing and imitating the behaviour of others.

moral anxiety

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's fear of punishment for failure to adhere to the superego's standards of proper conduct.

multicultural counselling and therapy

Treatments with interventions that have been modified to address issues, beliefs, and dialogues that characterize people from various cultures.