Psychopathology Key Terms Flashcards
What is statistical infrequency?
Occurs when an individual has a less common characteristic, for example being more depressed or less intelligent than most of the population.
What is deviation from social norms?
Concerns behaviour that is different from the accepted standards of behaviour in a community or society.
What is failure to function adequately?
Occurs when someone is unable to cope with ordinary demands of day-to-day living.
What is deviation from ideal mental health?
Occurs when someone does not meet a set of criteria for good mental health.
What is a phobia?
An irrational fear of an object or situation.
What is depression?
A mental disorder characterised by low mood and low energy levels.
What is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)?
A condition characterised by obsessions and/or compulsive behaviour.
What is the behavioural approach?
A way of explaining behaviour in terms of what is observable and in terms of learning.
What is classical conditioning?
Learning by association. Occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together - an unconditional (unlearned) stimulus (UCS) and a new ‘neutral’ stimulus (NS). The neutral stimulus eventually produces the same response that was first produced by the unlearned stimulus alone.
What is operant conditioning?
A form of learning in which behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences. Possible consequences of behaviour include positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement or punishment.
What is systematic desensitisation (SD)?
A behavioural therapy designed to reduce an unwanted response, such as anxiety, to a stimulus. SD involves drawing up a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations related to the phobic stimulus, teaching the patient to relax, and then exposing them to phobic situations. The patient works their way through the hierarchy whilst maintaining relaxation.
What is flooding?
A behavioural therapy in which a phobic patient is exposed to an extreme form of a phobic stimulus in order to reduce anxiety triggered by that stimulus. This takes place across a small number of long therapy sessions.
What is the cognitive approach?
The term ‘cognitive’ has come to mean ‘mental processes’, so this approach is focused on how our mental processes (eg. thoughts, perceptions, attention) affect behaviour.
What is the negative triad?
Beck proposed that there were three kinds of negative thinking that contributed to becoming depressed: negative views of the world, the future and the self. Such negative views lead a person to interpret their experiences in a negative way and so make them more vulnerable to depression.
What is the ABC model?
Ellis proposed that depression occurs when an activating event (A) triggers an irrational belief (B) which in turn produces a consequences (C), ie. an emotional response like depression. The key to this process is the irrational belief.
