PSYC 331 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Monoamine Oxidase, Mental Disorder, Biopsychosocial Model

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 331
• Professor: Ariel Fenster

Document Summary

Focuses on the interaction between a predisposition toward disease the diathesis and environmental, or life, disturbances the stress. Diathesis refers most precisely to a constitutional predisposition toward illness, but the term may be extended to any characteristic or set of characteristics that increases a person"s chance of developing a disorder. Possessing the disorder increases a person"s risk of developing it but does not guarantee that the disorder will develop. It is the stress part of diathesis-stress that accounts for how a diathesis may be translated into an actual disorder. Psychopathology is unlikely to result from any single factor. A genetically transmitted diathesis may be necessary for some disorders, but it is embedded in a network of other factors that also play a part. Biopsychosocial paradigm: biological, psychological, and social factors are conceptualized as different levels of analysis or subsystems within the paradigm.