Psychopathology (Paper 1) Flashcards
What is Deviation from Social Norms as a definition of abnormality?
Deviation from social norms is a definition of abnormality where behaviour is measured against the general standards set by society. People who fail to adhere to the accepted moral and ethical norms are most likely seen as deviating and therefore abnormal. These include behaviours such as ASPD (anti-social personality disorder) and pedophilia.
What is Statistical Infrequency as a definition of abnormality?
Statistical infrequency as a definition of abnormality judge attributes and behaviours based on how often they occur. Using a graph of normal deviation the most common “normal behaviours” would lie in the middle while the rare “abnormal behaviours” would lie on the tail ends. This is due to their behaviour or attribute being statistically infrequent / uncommon making it abnormal.
What is Failure to Function Adequately as a definition of abnormality?
Failure to Function Adequately as a definition of abnormality is the inability to go about your daily life and cope with these general tasks. Identifications of not being able to cope are: no longer conforming to standard interpersonal rules, severe personal distress and irrational / dangerous behaviour. This measured through the (General assessment of functioning) GAF scale allow the extent of failure to be measured.
What is Deviation from Ideal Mental Health as a definition of abnormality?
Deviation from Ideal Mental Health judges abnormality based on what it perceives as normality. Thus normality showing good mental health in the same way that one would look at physical health. This is done by following a comprehensive set of criteria from Jahoda such as: high self esteem, stress-resistant, in touch, showing empathy, accurate perceptions of reality, focused on the future and environmental mastery. DIMH suggest that the absence of any of these criteria is an indication of abnormality.
What are the advantages of Deviation from Social Norms?
Using this definition we can normal behaviour from abnormal behaviour as it gives a clear distinction between the two as it is easy to recognise someone not following societal norms e.g a person with schizophrenia may be talking to themselves which is not normal
It has real life applications for example: in the diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder, the symptoms clearly state that this persons behaviour is deviating from social norms. This means we can apply the definition to real life making it an authentic definition
What are the advantages of Statistical Infrequency?
Statistical Infrequency has a real life application as it allows for the diagnosis of intellectual and disability disorders. It allows for the severity of different symptoms to be measured. If those symptoms were to fall in “normal distribution” they are normal and if not then it is abnormal. This definition therefore allows us to compare normal to abnormal.
This definition is also very objective as there is a cut-off point between normal and abnormal which has been agreed upon meaning that people who fall outside the normal range are objectively abnormal according to this definition. This would reduce and bias or subjectivity held.
What are the advantages of Failure to Function Adequately?
One strength of Failure to Function Adequately is that it does include the subjective experience of the individual and allow their thoughts and feelings to be acknowledged. This therefore suggest that Failure to Function Adequately is a useful model for assessing psychopathological behaviour.
Another strength is that this definition of abnormality can be objectively measured using the GAF (General assessment of functioning) scale and allows the extent of failure to function to be measured. This means that whether a person is normal or abnormal it can be made objectively.
What are the advantages of Deviations from Ideal Mental Health?
It is a comprehensive definition that covers a broad range of criteria for mental health including most reasons why someone would seek help in the first place e.g low self esteem, inaccurate perceptions of reality and no empathy meaning that this person would clearly need help.
The criteria set also allows for clear goal to be set and focused upon to achieve ideal mental health and in Jahoda’s opinion “normality”. It therefore allows the individual to be aspirational, focus on the future and hope to achieve self-actualisation.
What are the disadvantages of Deviation from Social Norms?
Cultural relativism - Attempts to define abnormality is influenced by cultural factors because social norms are defined by our culture. According to this definition a person’s behaviour could be abnormal in one culture but not in another culture. Voice pitch and volume, touching, directions of gaze and acceptable subjects for discussion have all been found to vary between cultures. This creates problems for people from one culture living in another culture.
Deviation related to context - Making judgements on deviance from a social norm is often related to context of a behaviour. In other words a person nearly naked on a beach is normal but not in a classroom. In many cases, there is not a clear distinction between what is seen as abnormally deviant behaviour and what behaviour is just harmless ‘eccentricity’.
Definitions of socially “normal” behaviour can change over time -.e.g. homosexuality, was not socially acceptable 50 years ago. If we define abnormality according to social norms what is classed as abnormal will vary greatly over time. This is a weakness because it means abnormality cannot be judged across eras. Can also lead to human rights abuses – historically were used to maintain control over minority groups
What are the disadvantages of Statistical Infrequency?
Some unusual characteristics may be positive - This definition states that if you don’t fall in the main percentage of the population (68%) then you are abnormal. However, there are some people for example, whose IQ scores are over 130. Clearly, these people are not abnormal but super intelligent! But, again only 2.5% of the population will have this high intelligence score so these people are just as unusual as those below 70. However, we do not think of super-intelligence as being an undesirable characteristic that needs treatment. Just because very few people display a behaviour doesn’t mean that the behaviour requires treatment. Therefore an individual not fitting into the normal statistics can be seen as a positive thing but this definition does not acknowledge this.
Not everyone benefits from the stigma of being abnormal - If someone may be living a happy, fulfilled life there is no benefit to them being labelled as abnormal regardless of how unusual they are. Being labelled as abnormal may be negative if it causes others (or themselves) to view them differently – it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the individual starts to believe themselves as being abnormal. For example, if one has a low IQ and thus seen as abnormal may start seeing themselves as ‘thick’ and ‘mentally inferior’ because there IQ is statistically low. This is not a good thing as the person could start acting inferior and label him/herself as that – leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of being a failure. This means that the Statistical Infrequency definition of abnormality could actually cause someone to be abnormal
What are the disadvantages of Failure to Function Adequately?
Cultural relativism - as with the other definitions, this definition is also culturally relative in terms of what is not functioning adequately in one culture many be adequate in another culture e.g. sleeping during the day – for example in some countries they go through a Siesta period in the summer months where they sleep during the day – this would not be really acceptable in the UK and could be a sign of depression (especially if that person has no reason to sleep during the day)
Who judges - who is the person who decides if someone is failing to function adequately as this is related to the subjective experience of the individual, who then has the right to judge if a particular individual is abnormal – for example, a person may not eat for 2 days – do we have the right to assume that this person may be anorexic? Therefore this definition may result in making incorrect judgements about individuals which is not fair.
Abnormality doesn’t stop the person from functioning - The focus on how someone is coping in their everyday life is the focus of this definition. This may mean that some abnormal behaviour is missed. People may appear to be functionally adequately as they fit into society and have jobs and homes, but they may have distorted thinking which is causing them inner distress that they hide. Therefore this definition only focuses on coping in everyday life but may not always recognise inner turmoil and distress because the person appears normal and functioning well.
What are the disadvantages of Deviation from Ideal Mental Health?
Who can achieve all the criteria - According to these criteria, most of us are abnormal to some degree. No one shows all the criteria at all times for example, we are not always resistant to stress or we don’t always have a high self-esteem. This definition is therefore too ideal meaning that in reality no one can be mentally healthy all time!
Cultural relativism - Many, if not most of the criteria of the ideal mental health definition are culturally specific. Because of this, the criteria in this definition would not apply to non-western cultures but that does not mean that individuals from these cultures are not mentally healthy. For example, the idea of self-actualisation may not apply to countries where just having food and a roof over their head is important and education is not a necessity – people in these countries may have a different view of self actualisation.
Subjectivity - Many of the criteria that Jahoda outlines are vague and therefore very difficult to measure. This makes the decision as to whether someone fulfils the criteria difficult to make. For example, how can you judge if someone has a high self-esteem or is resistant to stress? These features can only really be judged by the individual themselves – making the criteria very subjective
What are the behavioural characteristics of phobias?
Panic - (screaming, running, freezing or throwing a tantrum)
Avoidance - affects daily life as they avoid their phobic stimulus and may not venture outside home
Endurance - when a sufferer remains in the presence of their phobia but continues to have high levels or anxiety
What are the emotional characteristics of phobias?
Anxiety - unpleasant state of high arousal stopping a person from feeling any positive emotion
Fear - immediate and immensely unpleasant response
Being unreasonable - having strong emotional response to even a minuscule phobic stimulus
What are the cognitive characteristics of phobias?
Selective attention - keeping focus on on your phobic stimulus as it is hard to look away but it is beneficial as it gives the person the best chance to react quickly
Irrational beliefs - a phobic may hold irrational beliefs that they must always act or say something in a certain way for example people with social phobias may always want to sound intelligent
Cognitive distortions - perceptions of the phobia are misrepresented and their phobias are taken out of proportion and seen as unpleasant and disgusting
What is the two process model?
The two process model consist of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Phobias are induced via classical conditioning and are then reinforced by operant conditioning
What is classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning is learning through association and has been used to account for the development of phobias. When a neutral stimulus (NS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) this will produce an unconditioned response (UCR). The NS will become the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the feeling associated with the UCS with become the Conditioned response (CR). Thus a phobia has been induced, the phobia being the CS and the response is the CR.
What is operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning is learning through reinforcement and punishments. They both have two aspects positive and negative. Positive reinforcement is giving a reward to the individual and incentivises them to repeat the action and maintain it. Negative reinforcement would be taking something away, an example being avoidance behaviour which takes away the persons anxiety. Positive punishment is giving pain to make sure that the individual associates pain with the action thus reducing the repetitive action. Negative punishment is to get something positive the individual had and take it away so that the individual learns not to do that action again.
What are the strengths of the two process model
This model doesn’t label people with the stigma of being mentally ill as such labels can be damaging and difficult to remove. Instead making phobias perceive as incorrect responses to be corrected.
King (1998) received several case studies and found that children acquire phobias after having been through traumatic experiences with the phobic object. (E.g dog bites may lead to phobias of dogs). This supports the idea of phobias being learned through classical conditioning.
What are the weaknesses of the Two process model
Many people who have a traumatic experience such as a car accident do not go on to develop a phobia so classical conditioning doesn’t explain how all phobias develop.
Some people are scared of an object but have never had a negative experience with that object or even encountered the object before. One case study found 50% of people who have a phobia of dogs have never had a bad experience involving a dog. So learning couldn’t have been a factor in developing the phobia.
This model focuses on learning and the environment but doesn’t take into account biological factors that can cause phobias. Some people have a genetic vulnerability to phobias.
What is systematic desensitisation?
This is the most popular form of behaviour therapy, and based on the principles of classical conditioning. It was first developed by Joseph Wolfe in the 1950s and is a form of counter-conditioning, where the therapist attempts to replace the fear response by an alternative and harmless response. It is designed to gradually relax phobic anxiety, as a new response to the phobic stimulus is learned. It is impossible to be afraid and relaxed at the same time, so one emotion prevents the other (reciprocal inhibition).
The Three Processes Involved in Systematic Desensitisation
The Anxiety Hierarchy, Relaxation and Gradual Exposure
The Anxiety Hierarchy
The Anxiety Hierarchy is put together by the patient and the therapist. This is a list of situations relating to the phobic stimulus arranged from least to most frightening. For example a person with arachnophobia might identify a picture as lower down the hierarchy and holding a tarantula at the top of the hierarchy
Relaxation
The therapist teaches the patient to relax as deeply as possible. As it is impossible to be afraid and relaxed at the same time, one emotion therefore prevents the other – known as reciprocal inhibition. This may involve breathing exercises, mental imagery techniques, and/or access to drugs such as Valium for relaxation.
Gradual Exposure
Finally, the patient is exposed to the phobic stimulus while in a relaxed state. This takes place across several sessions, beginning at the bottom of the anxiety hierarchy. When the patient can remain relaxed in the presence of the phobic stimulus, they can move up the hierarchy. Treatment is considered successful when patients can stay relaxed in situations high up on the anxiety hierarchy.
What are the stages of the Anxiety Hierarchy
- Therapist and client together construct a fear/anxiety hierarchy – a series of imagined scenes, each causing more anxiety than the previous
- Client is then taught to relax – using different techniques such as breathing, muscle relaxation, mental imagery
- Client gradually works his/her way through desensitisation hierarchy, visualising each anxiety-evoking event while engaging in the competing relaxation response (reciprocal inhibition)
- Once the Client has mastered one step in the hierarchy (i.e. they can remain relaxed while imagining it), they are ready to move on to the next step
- At each stage, if the client becomes upset they can return to an earlier stage and regain their relaxed state.
- Client eventually masters the feared situation that caused them to seek help in the first place - This means that when the client remembers their fear – it is now replaced with relaxation and calmness.
What is flooding?
Flooding exposes patients to their phobic stimulus without gradual build up. It generally stops phobic response quickly as they don’t have the option of avoidance so the patient learns that the stimulus is harmless. This is called extinction. It is a very unpleasant experience this it is important patients give their full consent for the traumatic procedure.
What are the strengths of systematic desensitisation?
It is, in general, quite quick and requires less effort than other forms of psychotherapies where the patient needs to play an active role. Behavioural therapies may be the only treatment suitable for certain groups of people .e. g. individuals with severe learning difficulties.
It is an ethical method to use for treating phobias because the stages enable participants to feel comfortable unlike flooding where the person is ‘thrown into the deep end’ quickly which could be very stressful thus patients generally prefer this procedure because it does not involve the same level of trauma as some other procedures.
It does work for certain phobias – e.g. blood injection and spider phobias – success rate is up to 90%. For example Gilroy et al (2003) followed up 43 patients with spider phobias who had SD in three 45-minute sessions. At both 3 months and 33 months the patients were significantly less fearful of spiders than a control group who were treated only with training in relaxation. This suggests that it is effective, in the long term as well as the short term.
What are the weaknesses of Systematic Desensitisation?
It only works for certain phobias for example, systematic desensitisation may not work for social phobias which may require more detailed or an alternative therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
It relies on the client’s ability to be able to imagine the fearful situation e.g. when using the in vivo technique. Some people cannot create a vivid image in their mind in which case the in-vitro technique might be more useful – but this could be costly – especially for someone who has a fear of heights - thus SD will not be effective in this case
While SD might be effective in the therapeutic situation, it may not work in the real world. Patients with phobias which have not developed through a personal experience (classical conditioning) for example, a fear of heights, seem to be less effectively treated using systematic desensitisation. Some psychologists believe that certain phobias, like heights, have an evolutionary survival benefit and are not the result of personal experience, but the result of evolution. These phobias highlight a limitation of systematic desensitisation which is ineffective in treating evolutionary phobias.
What are the strengths of Flooding?
Flooding is highly effective and often quicker than alternative treatments, enabling patients to be free of their symptoms as soon as possible which makes treatment cheaper. Studies comparing flooding to cognitive therapy e.g. Ougrin (2011) have found that flooding is highly effective and quicker than alternatives. In fact, Choy (2007) found flooding to be more effective that systematic desensitisation in treating phobias.
Wolpe (1960) supports the use of flooding to remove a patient’s phobia of being in cars. The girl was forced into a car and driven around for four hours until her hysteria was eradicated. This demonstrates how effective flooding is as a treatment for phobias.
Weaknesses of Flooding?
Flooding is less effective for complex phobias such as social phobias, because these phobias often have a cognitive aspect to them. These types of phobias would benefit more from cognitive therapies, which tackle irrational thinking.
Although flooding is considered a cost‐effective solution, it can be highly traumatic for patients since it purposefully elicits a high level of anxiety. Wolpe (1969) recalled a case with a patient becoming so intensely anxious that she required hospitalisation. Although it is not unethical as patients provide fully informed consent, many do not complete their treatment because the experience is too stressful. Therefore, initiating flooding treatment is sometimes a waste of time and money if patients do not engage in or complete the full course of their treatment.
What are the Strengths of the behavioural approach?
It provides good explanations for how phobias could be maintained over time and this had important implications for therapies because it explains why patients need to be exposed to the feared stimulus. Once a patient is prevented from practising their avoidance behaviour, the behaviour ceases to be reinforced and so it declines – this has been successfully proven through behavioural therapies such as flooding and systematic desensitisation.
It is supported by experimental evidence .e.g. the Little Albert Case study (Watson and Raynor, 1920) – in this study it was shown how a phobia could happen through classical conditioning by pairing a loud noise with a white rat, Little Albert showed a fear of white rats and this fear generalised to other white fluffy animals. Thus this study supports the idea that a phobia can be formed through a bad or frightening experience.
What are the weaknesses of the behavioural approach?
One weakness of the behavioural approach is that not all avoidance behaviour associated with phobias seems to be the result of anxiety reduction. There is evidence that suggests that at least some avoidance behaviour appears to be motivated more by positive feelings of safety. The two-process model suggests that avoidance is motivated by anxiety reduction, but it can also be motivated by safety. This suggests an incomplete explanation.
Another weakness of the behavioural approach is that the behavioural approach may not provide a complete explanation of phobias. For example, Bounton (2007) highlights the fact that evolutionary factors could play a role in phobias, especially if the avoidance of a particular stimulus (e.g. snakes) could have caused pain or even death to our ancestors. Consequently, evolutionary psychologists suggest that some phobias (e.g. snakes and heights) are not learned but are in fact innate, as such phobias acted as a survival mechanism for our ancestors. This innate predisposition to certain phobias is called biological preparedness (Seligman, 1971) and casts doubt on the two‐process model since it suggests that there is more to phobias than learning.
A final weakness of the behavioural approach is the fact that the evidence to support it is flawed and not always ethically sound – for example, the Little Albert case where a phobia for rats was induced in a 10 month old boy was ethically unsound - for example, Little Albert did not give his consent to take part in the study. This means that Watson and Raynor breached the ethical code of consent . Also as Little Albert was a baby, he would be too young to understand the consequences of this study which meant that this study posed a significant risk of long term harm for Little Albert. In fact, by inducing a phobia in the boy, meant that this child would grow up fearing rats even though this fear was not due to a natural experience. This means that we should be cautious when looking at the evidence to support the behavioural approach in explaining phobias because of the serious ethical issues.
Who proposed Deviation from Social Norms?
Perkins and Berkowitz (1986)
Who proposed Failure to Function Adequately?
Rosenham and Seligman (1989)
