Psychology - Psychopathology

What are the four ways we can decide if someone needs help with their mental health?

• Deviation from social norms

• Failure to function adequately (FFA)

• Deviation from ideal mental health

• Statistical abnormality

What is deviating from social norms?

What is observer discomfort?

social norms are implicit and explicit rules for acceptable behaviours in a specific society

• implicit means unspoken e.g queuing

• Explicit means written e.g laws

Deviating from social norms is behaviour that violates societies expectations this may or may not include criminal behaviour, when people deviate from social norms they make other people uncomfortable, this is called observer discomfort

What is failure to function adequately (FFA)?

Functioning adequately is when we can cope with the day to day demands of life, individuals create expectations of themselves and society also has demands on us

The expectation we have for ourselves often matches the demands of society but they don’t always

A person would be considered to be psychologically abnormal if they cannot meet demands of life e.g keeping personal hygiene, not managing relationships

What is deviation from ideal mental health? (Maria Jahoda)

This is a positive approach to assess psychological abnormality, it sets out criteria for ideal mental health rather than what is missing

Criteria for ideal mental health;

• positive attitudes towards the self

• Self actualisation

• Resistance to stress

• Personal autonomy

• Accurate perception of reality

• Adapting and mastering the environment

What is the opposite criteria

• Negative attitude towards self

• Not reaching full potential

• Being easily overwhelmed, lacking coping mechanisms

• Co-dependency

• Hallucinations and delusions

• FFA, not functioning or coping

What is statistical abnormality?

Deviating from a numerical average, either because it is carried out very frequently or hardly at all

Based on normal distribution of behaviour

• best example is IQ tests

• Average score is 100, 130 indicates genius, 70 and below indicates intellectual disability

What is standard deviation?

• It is a measure of dispersion (how spread out scores are in a data set) in psychological terms this is about how variable people are

• Standard deviation is a reliable measure of dispersion because it takes into account every data point in a set, this means the standard deviation is less skewed by anomalies which in turn makes the results more representitive of a data set

• The range is the highest - lowest score, it may be skewed by anomalies e.g a large anomaly taking away a small one will be unrepresentitive of the avarage

• small range or standard deviation means there is little variablility between ppts and with large meaning there is wide variability

What are the positives of defining abnormalty with deviation from social norms?

• Makes identifying people who need help a straightforward process we all have understanding of social norms so when someone deviates from them, it is easy to identify

• It has face value, on the surface it seems to make the most sense and a useful way of defining abnormality

What are the limitations of definng abnormality with deviation from social norms?

• it is culturally relative within society, there is variability in what is considered abnomal. Different people have different standards of behaviour between societies, there are cultural differences and different social norms. This means we don’t have a universal definition of abnormality

• This definition lacks temporal validity, societies norms change overtime so what society considers abnormal also changes e.g homosexuality used to be considered a mental disorder and homosexuals would undergo therepy like conversion therepy. This practive was removed from the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual) in the early 1970s

What are the positives of defining abnormality by using FFA?

• Reflects an indivduals response to their ability to meet demands of everyday life. People often come forward to get help because they don’t feel able to cope

• Takes into account a persons perspectives of how well they are functioning

• FFA can be used to assess the extent to which someoneisn’t coping as we can use the global assessment functioning scale (GAF) to decide if someone needs intervention

• We can use the seven criteria listed by Rosenhan and Seligman to discuss to extent to which someone is FFA

What are the negatives of defining abnormality by using FFA?

• some people fail to cope with daily life because demands made on them are just too overwhelming. Given this we should’nt conclude someone is abnormal as it is the fault of the situation or enviroment they are in

• FFA would miss peoplewho are abnormal but functioning well. E.g Harold Shipman who murdered numerous elderly female patients of his only got caught by chance

What are the positives of defining abnorrmality by deviation from ideal mental health?

• giving a standard to work from rather than focussing on inadequaties

• positive approach focussing on what qualities an indivdual has rather than what they don’t have

• It can be used as a guide in therepy and councilingshowing areas of strength and improvements

What are the negatives of defining abnormality by using deviation from ideal mental health ?

• Not only based on observable behaviour (like deviation from social norms) we would need to discuss someone’s self esteem with them to find out about themselves

• sets a very high standard for good mental health, most of us at some point don’t meet all of the criteria but that doesn’t make us abnormal

What are the positives of defining abnormality by using statistical abnormality?

• it is an objective method, this is because it is quantitative and has a set of points

• Judgement is straightforward as set cut off points are made

• There is a wide range of scores either side of the mean before someone is considered abnormal like with IQ tests if some is below 70 they are abnormal but if someone is over 130 they are too, there are 2 standard deviations

• Standardised tests with pre-determined normal distributions and standard deviations allows for rapid assessment and reliability

What are the limitations of defining abnormality by using statistical abnormality?

• allows us to decide that there is a problem in an objective which but not why the problem exists making the method reductionist, idea of normality and abnormality simplified into numerical value

• Not all abnormal behaviour can be quantified or distributed meaning this has limited applicability

What are the cognitive characteristics of OCD?

• Obsessions, intrusive thoughts that are unwanted, often the thoughts are disgusting and repulsive

• from this anxiety is caused which could extend to fear or panic

• irrational beliefs, if i can do X this can prevent Y

• Catastrophic thoughts, if i don’t do X something terrible will happen

• Hypervigilance, selective attention, being alert to dangers, paying attention to certain situations

What are the emotional and behavioural characteristics of OCD?

• emotional, anxiety caused by obsessional thought, Disgust or repulsion

• behavioural, compulsions that are repetitive, ritualistic, these behaviours are carried out to reduce the anxiety

What is the main idea about genetic cause of OCD?

• Genetic inheritance can play a part in if someone has OCD

• the more closely related you are to someone with OCD the more likley you are to have it

• the prevalence rate for people who have OCD according to the national institute of clinical excellence (NICE) was 1-4%

What did Lewis find about OCD’s association to genetic inheritance?

in 1936, Lewis found OCD may have a genetic explanation, he found 37% of parents had OCD and 21% of siblings showing there could be an inherited factor

This study was concluded by the idea that OCD seems to run in families as the rates are far higher than found in the general population

What has modern research shown about OCD and it’s link to genetic inheritance?

OCD is polygenetic, modern research using DNA analysis shows that OCD is not caused by a single gene but a combination of genes

• Taylor in 2013 found that in a meta-analysis study 250 genes could be combined

Aetiologically heterogenous, this is the idea that the combination of candidate genes (genes that are likely to be involved in OCD) vary between differant people, there is no fixed combination

What is an example of a candidate gene that is involved with OCD?

5HT1Dbeta

How are neurotransmitters regulated through candidate genes?

Neurotransmitters like seritonin and dopamine are regulated by candidate genes which are associated with OCD e.g 5HT1Dbeta which is a receptor gene, it is involved with the transmission of seratonin across the synapse

What is the neural explanation of OCD?

• Lateral frontal cortex, which is responsible for logical thinking and descion making. If changed, irrational thoughts and catastrophying can be part of abnormal functioning

• Parahippocampal Gyrus, this is responsible for processing unpleasant emotions like disgust, if changed, there are persistant intrusive thoughts and feelings of disgust

How can a underactive seretonin system become a cause of OCD?

• groups of neurons that respond to seretonin are not active enough due to a lack of seretonin

• The groups of neurons are known as pathways as they often stretch from one area of the brain to another

What are the positives of the genetic biological explanation for OCD?

• It has scientific credibility, e.g DNA studies contain objective data, it has a testable hypothesis, research can be replicated to verify the results

• There is lot’s of evidance that there is a genetic component to OCD from Lewis, Nestadl and Taylor

What are the limitations of the genetic biological explanation for OCD?

• Nestadl’s study; the concordance rate (CR) is not 100% meaning OCD is not entirely genetically inheritied (MZ CR would be 100% if this would be the case)

• The understanding from above indicates there are other factors involved in OCD like the enviroment and severity of trauma (cromers study) he found 51% of his patients had trauma, There is a positive correlation between OCD severity and trauma severity

  • E.g, diathesis stress model, genetic vunerability, trauma acts as a trigger for OCD, this combiines nature and nurture

• This purely genetic explanation is reductionist, it over simplifies a complex disorder, it is highly unlikely that different combinations of genes can cause different types of OCD, your enviroment/trauma are more likely to cause the specific type of OCD

• Another explanation of OCD is that it is learnt through other family members which it explains why OCD seems to run in families e.g imitating older siblings or twin to gain gratitude