Psychopathology Flashcards
Who identified 6 factors to define ‘ideal mental health’?
MARIE JAHODA - Positive attitude towards yourself (being able to think positively about yourself and can accept your faults)
- accurate perception of Reality (being able to perceive situations and the environment accurately)
- Resistance to stress (being able to endure and recover from periods of stress)
- Autonomy (feeling that you have control of your own future)
- Mastery of the environment (being competent and effective in all aspects of your life and to be flexible when necessary)
- Self-actualisation (being able to fulfil your potential and not waste your life doing things you don’t want to do).
Who introduced the two-process model of acquiring a phobia?
MOWRER (1947) - association through classical conditioning (eg choking being associated to a button)
- reinforcement of behaviour through operant conditioning (a reduction in fear by avoiding buttons)
- stimulus generalisation
- vicarious learning (learning to associate by witnessing someone experiencing intense fear)
Who found evidence for the role of classical conditioning in phobias?
WATSON AND RAYNER (1920) - presented an 11 month old boy (little Albert) with a white rat. Every time the rat appeared, Watson scared the boy with a loud clanging noise. Quickly, the boy started to show fear towards the rat
Who found evidence for vicarious learning?
BANDURA AND ROSENTHAL (1966) - participants watched a confederate, hooked up to an electrical piece of equipment, show signs of pain when a buzzer sounded. After several times, the participant started to show signs of fear at the sound of the buzzer.
Who tested whether phobias are acquired biologically?
COOK AND MINEKA (1989) - wanted to compare how long it would take for monkeys to become afraid of toy snakes compared to toy rabbits. None had seen either before. The monkeys were shown a picture of a snake paired with s video of their mother acting fearfully. This was repeated with the rabbit. The monkeys learned to be afraid of the snake and not the monkey. If was concluded that baby monkeys are biologically prepared to be afraid of snakes. Therefore to fully understand phobias, we need to understand the biological factors.
How do you define abnormality?
Statistical infrequency - behaviour that is statistically infrequent or very rarely seen in the general population.
😊 this is very objective
😔 fails to take into consideration how severe someone’s condition is
Definition from social norms - behaviour that is seem as socially unacceptable or undesirable within society
😊 can protect society from behaviour that is offensive
😔 many people with mental disorders do not deviate from social norms
Failure to function adequately - behaviour that means that the person is unable to engage or cope with the activities in day to day life.
😊 allows the severity of behaviour to be assessed by establishing the extent to which the persons life is affected.
😔 deciding what is not adequate functioning is subjective ~ our perception is influenced by culture and gender.
Deviation from ideal mental health - when someone does not meet a set of criteria for mental well being.
😊 the criteria outlines what individuals and society should be aiming for to maximise mental well being.
😔 almost no one meets all the criteria, this doesn’t mean that they necessarily need treatment.
Who found the effectiveness of systematic desensitisation?
GILROY (2000) - Forty five patients with a phobia to spiders were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups:
(a) Computer aided vicarious exposure
(b) therapist delivered live exposure
(c) relaxation placebo (without exposure)
Each group received 45 minute sessions. They were measure pretreatment, post treatment and at 3 month follow up assessments. Both a and b were more affective than c.
Who found evidence for the effectiveness of flooding?
WOLPE (1960) - conducted a case study of a girl who was afraid of driving using flooding. She was driven for 4 hours until her intense anxiety reduced and she overcame her fear.
What was Albert Ellis’s cognitive model of depression?
He argued that depression depends on how a person thinks following an unpleasant event. If this thinking is irrational and unrealistically negative, they are likely to feel depressed. We can understand a person’s emotions in a situation by breaking it down into three steps:
A=adverse events
B=beliefs
C=consequences
What was Aaron Beck’s approach to depression?
He explored negative thinking in more detail. He described the effects of Negative Scema (LEWINSOHN-found that in adolescents that had experienced unpleasant life events a year after being measured and who had negative attitudes at the start were more likely to suffer from depression), Cognitive Errors and Biased Memories (CLARK AND TEASDALE-those with a depressed mood in the morning remembered more negatively than in the evening).
😔 McGuffin (1996) found that the concordance rate of depression in DZ twins was 20% and was 46% in MZ twins.suggesting genes do play a part in depression
Who measured the long term effectiveness of CBT for depression?
HOLLON ET AL (2005) - 104 patients who had responded well to CT or antidepressants were followed up over 12 months.
Rates of relapse (the return of symptoms for at least 2 weeks) were monitored. 30% of patients had relapsed over 12 months who had CBT, but 75% had relapsed after 12 months after anti-depressants.
Who argued that abnormalities in brain structures cause OCD?
BAXTER (1992) - abnormalities mean that primitive behaviours get activated despite sensory information telling the brain there is no threat.
Who found evidence suggesting that brain abnormalities cause OCD?
POLAK ET AL (2012) - reported a case of a 65 year old who had whistled the same carnival song for nearly 16 years and it would get worse when he became tired. This behaviour reduced with treatment with a drug which increased the neurotransmitter serotonin.
Who found evidence that genes play a role in OCD?
NESTADT (2010) - found a concordance rate of 68% in MZ twins and 31% in DZ twins.
Who found the effectiveness of SSRI’s in treating OCD?
SOOMRO ET AL (2008) - reviewed 17 studies comparing SSRI’s to a placebo in treating OCD. It was estimated that 70% of patients show a significant reduction in symptoms (suggesting that at least 30% will need alternative treatment).
