Chapters 1 Define Abnormal Psychology Test 1 Study Guide o Psychopathology is the study of mental disorders Study of the nature development and treatment of psychological disorders Challenges to the study of psychopathology Maintain objectivity Avoid preconceived notions Reduce stigma It s ambiguous it s a developing science Therefore research often shows conflicting results o Personal Distress emotional pain and suffering helplessness and hopelessness of depression o Defining mental disorder Personal distress emotional pain and suffering Helplessness and hopelessness of depression Disability impairment in a key area e g work relationships Chronic substance abuse results in job lose Violation of social norms makes others uncomfortable or causes problems Antisocial behavior of the psychopath Dysfunction Wakefield s Harmful Dysfunction failure of internal mechanisms in the mind to function properly Anchored in evolutionary biology and refers to failure of an internal mechanism to perform one of its naturally selected functions o What is the DSM 5 definition of mental disorder The disorder occurs within the individual It involves clinically significant difficulties in thinking feeling or behaving It involves dysfunction in processes that support mental functioning It is not a culturally specific reaction to an event e g death of a loved one It is not primarily a result of a social deviance or conflict with society o What are the characteristics of a stigma 1 Distinguishing label is applied 2 Label refers to undesirable attributes 3 People with the label are seen as different 4 People with the label are discriminated against What are the contributions of o Hippocrates 5th century BC Mental disturbances have natural not supernatural causes problems with the brain Three categories of mental disorders mania melancholia phrenitis brain fever Normal brain functioning depended on balance of four humors blood black bile yellow bile and phlegm o Philippe Pinel 1745 1826 Pioneered humanitarian treatment at LeBicetre He was a French physician who was instrumental in the development of a more human psychological approach to the custody and care of psychiatric patients referred to today as moral therapy He also made notable contributions to the classification of mental disorders and has been described by some as the father of the modern psychiatry Moral treatment Small privately funded humanitarian mental hospitals Friends Asylum 1817 Patients engaged in purposeful calming activities e g gardening Talked with attendants o Galton s 1822 1911 Work lead to notion that mental illness can be inherited Galton s law states that our heritage is on average constituted from that of our ancestors according to the following proportions parents jointly contribute one half grandparents one quarter great grandparents one eighth o Pavlov 1902 Started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn Ex dogs don t learn to salivate whenever they see food This reflex is hard wired into the dog In behaviorist terms it is an unconditioned response i e a stimulus response connection that required no learning Unconditioned stimulus food unconditioned response salivate However Pavlov discovered that any object or event which the dogs learnt to associate with food such as the lab assistant would trigger the same response he realized that he had made an important scientific discovery the dogs in his lab had learned to associate food with his lab assistant A change in behavior of this type must be the result of learning Classical Conditioning Unconditioned Stimulus UCS Meat powder automatically elicits salivation Unconditioned Response UR Salivation automatic response to meat powder Neutral Stimulus NS Initial ringing of bell does not automatically elicit salivation Conditioned Stimulus CS After pairing the NS and the UCS the NS becomes a CS bell now automatically elicits salivation Conditioned Response CR Salivation automatic response to bell Extinction CS bell not followed by UCS meat powder causes gradual disappearance of CR salivation o Benjamin Rush Treatment at asylums were non existent or harmful He promoted public health by advocating clean environment and stressing the importance of personal hygiene His study of mental disorder made him one of the founders of American psychiatry brain pressure o He recommended drawing copious amounts of blood to relieve Eugenics promotion of enforced sterilization to eliminate undesirable characteristics from the population Many state laws required mentally ill to be sterilized Insulin coma therapy Sakel 1930 s a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks Electric convulsive shock therapy ECT 1930 induce epileptic seizures with electric shock Prefrontal lobotomy Moniz 1935 often used to control violent behaviors led to listlessness apathy and loss of cognitive abilities Freud Freudian or Psychoanalytic theory o Human behavior determined by unconscious forces o Psychopathology results from conflicts among these unconscious forces o Id Unconscious Pleasure principle Immediate gratification Libido Energy of ID o Ego o Superego Primarily conscious Reality principle Attempt to satisfy ID s demands within reality s constraints The conscious Develops as we incorporate parental and society values o Id ego and superego continually in conflict conflict generates anxiety o Ego generates strategies to protect itself from anxiety Defense mechanisms Psychological maneuvers used to manage stress and anxiety Defense mechanisms a mental process initiated typically unconsciously to avoid conscious conflict or anxiety o Repression keeping unacceptable impulses or wishes from conscious awareness EX a professor starting a lecture she dreaded giving says in conclusion o Denial not accepting a painful reality into conscious awareness EX a victim of childhood abuse does not acknowledge it as an adult Free Association o Freud asked patients to relate anything which came into their mind regardless of how apparently unimportant or potentially embarrassing the memory threatened to be This technique assumed that all memories are arranged in a single associative network and that sooner or later the subject would stumble across the crucial memory o The process of releasing and thereby providing relief from strong or repressed Catharsis emotions Transference Interpretation o
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