Psychopathology Flashcards
(145 cards)
1
Q
What is psychopathology?
A
The study of psychological disorders.
2
Q
What is abnormality?
A
A psychological or behavioural state the significantly impacts everyday life.
3
Q
What are the strengths of deviation from social norms?
A
Look at social norms and see if the person meets them.
Society identifies deviation and tries to help in contrast to judging individual.
4
Q
What are the weaknesses of deviation from social norms?
A
It depends on the context.
Breaking a social norm is linked to time period and the culture your in.
5
Q
Who is Stephen Gough?
A
He was an activist that walked the distance of the UK naked. Some countries would agree with this.
6
Q
What is Ethnocentrism?
A
Occurs when a person uses their own cultural beliefs to understand a person from another culture, often in a negative way.
7
Q
What is deviation from social norms?
A
Any behaviour which differs from that society expects, as abnormal.
8
Q
What is failure to function adequately?
A
An individual who fails to cope with everyday life. For example working for a living, take care of themselves and maintaining relationships. If these are not maintained then it can be considered as abnormal.
9
Q
How do you measure FTFA?
A
clinical psychologists use the Global Assessment of Functioning scale to rate a persons social, occupational and psychological functioning.
A list of statements with given a score between 1 and 100.
10
Q
What are the strengths of FTFA?
A
It focuses on whether a person is coping, if not then is abnormal and needs support.
Checklists when measuring makes it easier for doctors to view and diagnose to others.
11
Q
What are the weaknesses of FTFA?
A
Behaviour can get quite extreme before individual receives help.
Individual who is thought to be failing can think that they are coping fine.
12
Q
What is statistical infrequency?
A
A persons trait, thinking or behaviour is classified as abnormal if it is rare or statistically unusual.
13
Q
What percentage of diseases in a population is considered as abnormal or rare?
A
The top 2.5% and bottom 2.5% of a population.
14
Q
What are the strengths of statistical infrequency?
A
Relies of statistics so can be more objective than some other definitions of abnormality.
Doesn’t rely on a persons feelings about someone else’s behaviour.
15
Q
What are the weaknesses of statistical infrequency?
A
Some conditions aren’t rare such as depression so therefore not abnormal in this situation.
The person making the diagnosis will need access to normal distribution for behaviours.
16
Q
What’s an example of statistical infrequency?
A
Schizophrenia
17
Q
What percentage of the population have schizophrenia?
A
2%
18
Q
What is deviation from ideal mental health?
A
Any behaviour that differs from perfect psychological health as abnormal.
19
Q
What are Jahoda’s 6 characteristics for ideal mental health?
A
Positive attitude to oneself
Personal growth
Integration
Autonomy
Accurate perception of reality
Mastery of the environment
20
Q
What does positive attitude to oneself mean?
A
Feel good about yourself. Having a high self-esteem.
21
Q
What does personal growth mean?
A
Grow and develop abilities, knowledge and talents.
22
Q
What does integration mean?
A
Are you able to cope with highly stressful situations?
23
Q
What is autonomy?
A
Being able to live independently and care for yourself.
24
Q
What is accurate perception of reality?
A
Seeing the world as it is without delusions and hallucinations.
25
What is the mastery of the environment?
The ability to love, work and have interpersonal relationships.
26
What are the strengths of Jahoda’s characteristics?
The use of a checklist should increase diagnosing the issue.
Patient can seek second opinion where new doctor can use the same checklist to see if they think there’s a deviation from ideal mental health.
27
What are the weaknesses of Jahoda’s characteristics?
The aspects are vague- how can someone’s self esteem be measured?
Most people don’t meet all of the characteristics, so then everyone would be abnormal.
28
What is a phobia?
An anxiety disorder that a patient experiences an irrational fear to a stimulus.
They have an avoidant/anxiety response whenever they feared stimulus.
29
What is a simple phobia?
These phobias usually develop during childhood and often improve as you grow older.
30
What’s an example of a simple phobia?
Arachnophobia- spiders
31
What’s a complex phobia?
Usually develop when you’re an adult
32
What’s an example of a complex phobia?
Social phobias- avoiding social situations
33
What are behavioural characteristics?
What the patient does
34
What are cognitive characteristics?
What the patient thinks
35
What are emotional characteristics?
What the patient feels
36
What are the behavioural characteristics of a phobia?
Avoid the thing that makes an individual feel anxious.
Might experience ‘fight or flight’ response and so needs to run away.
37
What are the cognitive characteristics of a phobia?
Irrational thinking.
May think that they need to get away from the stimulus that is triggering the fear.
Person knows their phobia is excessive and unreasonable but not able to stop themselves thinking.
38
What are the emotional characteristics of phobias?
Persistent and excessive fear, anxiety and panic.
May feel embarrassed.
39
What is depression?
A persistent feeling of profound sadness. At a diagnosable level the depression will affect everyday functioning.
40
What are the two types of depression?
Unipolar
Bipolar
41
What are the behavioural characteristics of depression?
Reduced energy and suffer from increased tiredness.
Some people may sleep more than normal whilst some may lack sleep. ( insomnia)
Eat more or less than normal.
42
What are the cognitive characteristics of depression?
Experience a lot of negative thoughts about themselves, world and the future.
Thoughts can be irrational.
43
What are the emotional characteristics of depression?
Sadness
Worthless feeling
Increased anger
Low self-esteem
44
What percentage of the population experience OCD?
1%
45
What are the behavioural characteristics of OCD?
Behaviour may be visible- switching lights on and off. OVERT
Behaviour may also be hidden- praying that things are okay. COVERT
46
What are the cognitive characteristics of OCD?
Obsessive thoughts keep coming back and are very intrusive.
Thoughts can be seen as uncontrollable so contributes to feeling of anxiety.
47
What are the emotional characteristics of OCD?
Most individuals experience panic attacks with anxiety and stress.
Often feel embarrassed and shame.
Feeling disgust is a key part of OCD germ.
48
What did Mowrer (1947) find?
Phobias are learnt and maintained through the two-process model.
Learnt and maintained through CLASSICAL CONDITIONING.
Maintained through OPERANT CONDITIONING.
49
What is classical conditioning?
Learning by association. This is how phobias start.
50
What is operant conditioning?
Behaviour is maintained and shaped by its consequences.
51
What is the two-process model?
An explanation for the onset and persistence of disorders that creates anxiety, such as phobias.
52
What was Watson and Rayner's (1920) study?
nicknamed the little albert study.
They taught a baby to fear different stimuli through classical conditioning.
A hammer was struck on a metal bar just as something Albert wanted to play with was put in front of him.
53
What is the weakness of Watson and Rayner's (1920) study?
Ethical issues because a small child was taught a phobia. His mother withdrew him from the research before he could be unconditioned.
54
What is the strength of Watson and Rayner's (1920) study?
It did demonstrate that a phobia can be learnt.
55
What did Bagby (1922) discover?
A woman acquired a phobia after getting her feet stuck in rocks near the base of a waterfall. She gained a phobia for running water.
Eventually she was de-conditioned although her phobia was very strong.
56
What did Seligman (1974) suggest?
Humans are more likely to develop phobias to living things.
Because this type of learning would've been beneficial in our evolutionary past. This explains why humans are more likely to develop phobias for snakes or spiders instead of cars for example.
57
What is the issue with the two-process model?
Only a minority have a phobia. If the behavioural approach is correct then we would expect everyone to develop similar fears.
58
What is the diathesis-stress hypothesis?
A scientific idea that can help explain the complexity of phobias.
Individuals are born with a genetic predisposition and when there's a stressful situation it triggers the phobia. Therefore only people at risk could develop a phobia but only if they experience an event that can act as a trigger.
59
What’s systematic desensitisation?
A therapy that’s designed to reduce an unwanted response such as anxiety. It involved drawing a hierarchy of anxiety and a person is taught to relax when exposed to a phobic situation.
60
What’s flooding?
A therapy that’s where a person is exposed to an extreme phobic situation.
It only lasts a few minutes and there’s a period of calm after the feeling.
61
What was Wolpe’s (1958) study?
He developed systematic desensitisation based on classical conditioning.
He suggested that you can’t feel anxious and relaxed in the presence of their phobia so could learn to stay relaxed.
Used a technique called the step by step approach.
62
What are the stages of Wolpe’s step by step approach?
1. Patients are taught how to relax
2. A hierarchy is created- from least anxiety causing to most anxiety causing situations.
3. Patient practices first step whilst also practicing relaxation techniques.
4. Patient works their way up through the hierarchy- only moving on when can remain calm
5. Patient is able to control their fear response.
63
What did Jones (1924) study to support the behavioural approach of phobias?
He used little Peter to reduce his fears of white animals.
He was sat closer and closer to the rabbit each time, and was rewarded his favourite food.
He unlearnt the phobia.
64
What did Brosnan and Thorpe (2006) study in support for the behavioural approach of phobias?
Investigated whether patients with technophobia could be treated using SD.
First study they used 8 patients with 8 controls. Patients had technophobia at the start. After 10 weeks of SD the 8 patients had similar levels of anxiety to control.
Second study, 30 technophobes were assigned to either a treatment or non-treatment group. After 1 year SD supported treatment group. Had a decrease of 3 times compared to non-treatment.
65
What is the limitation of systematic desensitisation?
Masks symptoms
Doesn’t get the underlying issues of the phobia.
66
What therapy did Wolpe also develop?
Flooding
67
What was Wolpe’s (1960) study to support flooding?
He used flooding to treat a girls fear of being in cars.
He forces her to sit in the back of a car and drive her round town for 4 hours.
In the end the girl learnt to be relaxed in cars.
68
What was Ost’s (1997) study to support flooding?
Found flooding was most effective when patient was encouraged to continue.
Suggests that flooding is most effective when you experience situations afterwards.
69
What was Solter’s (2007) study to decline flooding?
It’s not easy to use on younger children as they don’t understand what’s going on.
A 5 month old showed a phobia of being in a hospital after needing surgery. Treated through flooding in hospital.
2 months later, no remaining symptoms.
70
Why is flooding not appropriate for some patients?
Not appropriate for patients who have a poor physical health as it can lead to severe stress.
71
What is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for phobias?
Patient is taught how to relax and how to deal with stress.
Key aspect is that fearful thoughts are identified and changed so not as stressful.
This might therefore be superior to SD as it works for all phobias not just the one that the patient has.
72
What is the research to support the cognitive behavioural approach?
Kale et al (2004)
Found that CBT has a longer term effect than behavioural treatments.
77% of patients who were given CBT for a dental phobia were visiting dentists 4 years later.
73
What are the biological treatments for phobias?
Transquilisers
Sedatives like benzodiazepines (BZs)
74
What does benzodiazepines do?
Increase the level of neurotransmitters. GABA.
GABA slows down the processes in the brain and so removes anxiety associated with the phobia.
75
What is the weakness of using drugs as a treatment for phobias?
They can become addictive as they work instantly.
76
What’s the research support for BZs?
Ontiveros and Fontaine (1990)
Found that BZs could effectively treat social phobias at a low dose to help them overcome the fear.
However an issue of this is that when the patient stops using BZs the symptoms of the phobia can quickly come back.
77
What is the cognitive approach?
It explains the human behaviour through the way that people think and the different thought processes that we have.
78
What are the two explanations for the cognitive approach to depression?
Beck’s Negative Triad
Ellis’ ABC model
79
What is Beck's negative triad?
It combines negative schemas with cognitive biases.
80
What are the negative schemas according to Beck?
Negative views about the world
Negative views about the future
Negative views about one-self
81
What are schemas?
The mental representation of the world. These can develop in childhood.
82
What is Ellis's ABC model?
It is based on three phases and a second explanation.
83
What does A stand for in Ellis's ABC model?
Activating event, something in the environment.
84
What does B stand for in Ellis's ABC model?
Beliefs, having a belief about the event.
85
What does C stand for in Ellis's ABC model?
Consequence, an emotional response to a belief.
86
What are the three examples of a negative schema for Ellis ABC model?
Ineptness schema
Self-blame schema
Negative self-evaluation schema
87
What is a Ineptness schema?
Belief that you will fail at things.
88
What is a negative self-evaluation schema?
Evaluate yourself in a negative way.
89
What is the context of Becks negative Triad and Ellis's ABC model?
The more negative thoughts that you have the more likely that you will develop depression and will make it worse.
What you put in, you get out.
90
What are musturbatory thinking?
Three ways of thinking that contribute to ill health.
1. I must be approved or accepted by people.
2. I must do well, or i am worthless
3. World must give me happiness or i will die.
91
What is the research to support Becks Negative triad and Ellis's ABC model?
Beevers et al. (2010)
people with depression responded to sad faces more than people without depression.
Saisto et al. (2001)
Found that expecting mothers who engaged in negative thinking were more likely to experience depression. It can also affect the infant through later life, as has a chance also of developing depression.
92
What is the research for against Becks Negative triad and Ellis's ABC model?
Mclntosh and Fischer (2000)
Investigated Becks negative triad and only found to support one negative schema.- "one-self"
Alloy and Abramson (1979)
Sadder but wiser effect
The individual has suffered but learnt something also from experience.
93
What’s the biological approach to depression?
Lower levels of serotonin are thought to play a role in controlling negative, impulsive thoughts.
94
What did Zhang et al. (2005) find about the biological approach to depression?
Found a gene that causes low levels of serotonin and is 10 times more common in depressed people that the general population.
95
What drug increases the level of serotonin within our body?
Antidepressants
96
What are maladaptive thoughts?
The extent to which thoughts aren’t adaptive.
97
What is reframing?
The general change in a persons mindset, whether it be positive or negative.
98
What is cognitive behavioural therapy for depression?
Used to treat depression.
Aims to tackle the beliefs a person holds so that the consequences and outcomes of the belief can be changed.
99
What is the process of CBT for depression?
The patient is taught about the relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviour. Then helped to adapt thoughts.
100
What is REBT?
An extended form of Ellis ABC model to include DEF.
101
What does D stand for in Ellis extended ABC model?
Disputing
102
What does E stand for in Ellis extended ABC model?
Effects
103
What does F stand for in Ellis extended ABC model?
Feelings
104
What are the three types of disputing?
Logical, emperial, pragmatic.
105
What is logical disputing?
Getting patient to see if their thought makes sense.
106
What is emperial disputing?
Asks client if there’s evidence to support their belief.
107
What is pragmatic disputing?
Getting client to think how their belief is likely to help them.
108
What are the effects of disputing?
Beliefs are examined and new feelings are encouraged.
Tasks will be set each week, may be challenging but helps to build evidence to challenge faulty beliefs.
109
What did Ellis 1957 say about the extend version of ABC model, the REBT?
90% success rate for REBT.
Took an average of 27 sessions to complete
CBT is effective but in England it’s rare that a patient is offered this many sessions.
110
What did Embling 2002 find for CBT for depression?
Compared a group getting CBT with a control group without. They were given 12 sessions of the therapy and had improved but control group hadn’t.
111
How do antidepressants work?
They inhibit the breakdown of monomines such as serotonin.
Increase the amount of neurotransmitters in the brain by blocking their reuptake.
112
What’s an example of an antidepressant?
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
113
How do SSRIs work?
They increase the level of seretonin in the brain.
Inhibits impulsive thoughts in emotion centres of the brain, so reduces negative thoughts.
114
What’s an example of of extreme therapy?
Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT)
115
What is ECT?
An example of extreme therapy.
Only used on patients that are at risk of harm and doesn’t respond to any other therapy.
116
How does ECT work?
A small current is passed through the brain to trigger a seizure.
Can make them feel better after a few months.
117
What’s the biological approach to explaining OCD?
OCD is inherited through genes/DNA.
If caused by genetic factors we would expect first degree relatives of a person with OCD to have increased rate of OCD.
118
What’s the research for genetic explanations for OCD?
Gerald Nestadt et al (2010)
Twin studies.
Found that 68% of identical twins shared OCD as opposed to 31% of non-identical.
119
What does it mean when we say OCD is polygenic?
OCD isn’t caused by one single gene but a combination of genetic variations that together significantly decrease vulnerability.
120
What did Steven Taylor (2013) say about OCD being polygenic?
Analysed findings from previous studies and found evidence that up to 230 different genes may be involved in OCD.
121
What did Shehzad Ali et al (2017) say about relapse for CBT to treating depression?
assessed depression in 439 clients every month for 12 months following a course of CBT.
Found 42% of clients relapse into depression within 6 months of ending treatment and 53% within a year.
122
What does the sert gene do when it’s faulty?
Causes serotonin to be absorbed too quickly by the nervous system, so cannot play a role in blocking impulsive messages in the brain.
123
What did Hu (2006) study for the role of serotonin in OCD?
169 OCD patients tended to have lower serotonin levels than a group of 253 control.
124
What’s the neural explanation for OCD?
Focuses on neurotransmitters and the structures of the brain.
associated with childhood.
Caused by damage from infection with virus or bacteria.
125
What happens if there's a faulty copy of the compt gene?
Increases levels of dopamine in the limbic system. Increases levels of anxiety a person feels.
Therefore can drive obsessions associated with OCD.
126
What did Fallon and Nields (1994) say about neural explanation for infection for OCD?
40% of people who were infected with Lyme disease sufferer from neural damage which leads to OCD.
127
What did Pichero (2009) say about the neural explanations for infections for OCD?
In a US study children are often infected with strep throat before suddenly developing symptoms of OCD.
Children often develop Tourette’s with damage occurring in similar parts of the brain to OCD.
128
What did Saxons and Rauschenberg (2000) say about the role of the OFC in OCD?
Found consistent evidence for the role of the orbital frontal cortex in OCD in PET, FMRI, MRI studies.
129
What has the compt gene been found to do?
Found to increase the amount of dopamine in the thalamus which increases the anxiety that a person feels.
130
What’s the diathesis stress hypothesis for OCD?
Person needs a genetic predisposition for OCD and then needs an environmental stressor which could be a virus or bacterial infection or high levels of stress.
131
What percentage of the population experience OCD?
2-3%
132
What’s the biological treatment for OCD?
antidepressants.
133
Whats the most common SSRI for OCD for adults?
Fluoxetine
134
What’s the most common SSRI for children for OCD?
Sertraline.
135
What are the issues with SSRIs?
Have multiple side effects such as, agitation and shaky feeling
Dizziness
Dry mouth
Diarrhoea or constipation
Being or feeling sick
136
What did Koran et al. (2007) say was a weakness for antidepressants for treating OCD?
Antidepressants studies are short, only last 3-4 months.
Withdrawal effects of stopping medication is not well studied in OCD in short studies.
137
What did soomro et al say about the weaknesses of SSRIs for OCD?
Found that SSRIs are more effective than placebos in the treatment for OCD.
138
What did Maina et al. (2001) say is the weakness of antidepressants for OCD?
Patients relapse within a few weeks when they stop taking the medication.
Found that the majority of patients symptoms return and for some patients there’s a rebound effect where return of the symptoms are initially worse than the original OCD.
139
What’s the anti-anxiety medication for OCD?
These drugs are BZs and increase the amount of GABA in the brain so slows down activity in the brain by making it harder for neurones to start. So reduces obsessions.
140
What are examples of anti-anxiety medication for OCD?
Valium and xanax
141
What did Ashton (1997) find for research on BZs for OCD?
Have a high rate of addiction.
142
What’s publication bias ?
Only positive results are published
143
What did Turner et al. (2008) say about publication bias?
If a drug doesn’t have an effect the company won’t publish the results, making antidepressants look more effective.
144
What’s the behavioural therapy for OCD?
Exposure response prevention therapy.
It uses behavioural interventions to reduce strength of obsessions.
145
What’s the extreme treatment for OCD?
Brain surgery.
