Clinical Psychology Flashcards
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Ethics?
- no consent obtained for participation in research like in Carlson’s Experiment
- HCPC guidelines and the Code of Conduct allows Clinical Psychology to be ethical, as the practitioners need to follow the rules
- ethical issues with diagnosing mental health as the individual may feel as if they are being labelled with a mental health disorder
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Practical Issues in the Design?
- reliability and validity of the DSM to diagnose mental health disorders
- effect of individual differences, as the mental health of individuals is difficult to compare
- mostly qualitative data gathered which is subjective and difficult to analyse
- no visual representation of mental health so it is difficult to measure
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Reductionism?
- causes of mental health disorders are isolated and very specific- like schizophrenia focuses on the dopamine hypothesis
- diagnoses are not holistic
- treatment is purely focussed on the biological level- drug therapy
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Comparisons Between Ways of Explaining Behaviour using Different Themes?
- different methods to categorise and diagnose mental illnesses like the ICD or the DSM
- behaviour can be explained from different approaches- biologically or psychologically
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Psychology as a Science?
Psychology is a Science:
- research into mental disorders involves biological methods like lab experiments like Williams et al’s study
- treatments for mental illness like drug therapy
- highly scientific observations like in Rosenthal’s study
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Culture and Gender?
- cultural differences in diagnosis of mental health leading to culture bound syndrome- DSM is ethnocentric as it is based in the USA
- culture bound syndrome causes bias in diagnosis and invalid treatments
- gender differences in the frequency of a mental health disorder like depression is more common in women than in men
- gender differences in the beggining or onset of a disorder
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding the Nature-Nurture Debate?
Different theories and explainations of what causes mental health disorders:
- Nature: biological explainations like neurotransmitters, genetics or brain abnormalities
- Nuture: social or environmental explainations like social adversity or faulty thinking patterns
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding the Understanding of How Psychological Understanding has Developed Overtime?
- changes in the DSM over the last 60 years- improvements like the 5 axes have been made
- changes in drug therapies- from antipsychotics to neuroleptic drugs
- changes in explainations for mental health
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Social Control?
- treatment methods are seen as a form of social control as the behaviour of an individual may be controlled by drug therapy
- categorising peoples behaviours as normal or abnormal in Rosenthal’s Study leads to labelling
- code of conduct or polices for practitioners
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding the Use of Psychological Knowledge Within Society?
- therapies and treatments for mental health
- contribution from research into mental health has led to a wider acceptance of those who are mentally ill
- Rosenthal’s allows us to understand that there is little difference between the sane and the insane
What are the Issues and Debates in Clinical Psychology Regarding Socially Sensitive Research?
- Rosenthal’s research is socially sensitive as he is questioning the reliability of psychiatric hospitals and proffessions of the doctors and nurses
- Issues with labelling an individual with a mental illness using simply the DSM
- DSM decides the normal and abnormal
- Cultural issues with mental health- different beliefs
