(1) 5.3 Intro to Psychological Disorders

  • Psychological Disorders

    • A disturbance in people’s thoughts, emotions, or behavior that causes distress or suffering and impairs their daily lives

  • 4 D’s of Mental Disorders

    • Deviance → different, extreme, unusual

    • Distress → unpleasant & upsetting to the person with the disorder

    • Dysfunction → causes interference with the person’s daily life

    • Danger → poses risk of harm to themselves or others

  • Medical Model

    • Psych disorders have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and cured through hospital treatment

  • Diathesis-stress Model

    • The concept that genetic predisposition (diathesis) combines with environmental stressors (stress) to influence psychological disorders

  • Biopsychosocial Approach

    • Psych disorders are an interaction of biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors - both nature and nurture

  • Classifying Psychological Disorders

    • DSM-5-TR: widely used system for classifying psychological disorders

      • “diagnostic criteria and codes”

  • David Rosenhan

    • David Rosenhan Study - 1973 experiment that analyzed labeling by sending healthy subjects to psychiatric hospitals by having pretend hallucinations

  • Labels

    • Benefits

      • Communicate about their cases, to comprehend the underlying causes, and to discern effective treatment programs

    • Cons

      • Bias perceptions, they can also change reality