PSYC 3230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Conversion Disorder, Arteriosclerosis, Mental Disorder

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3230
• Professor: James E Alcock

Document Summary

Nomenclature of mental disorders based on the medical model of separate diseases. Noted that certain symptoms of mental disorders occurred together. Believed that as with physical illness, it was necessary to isolated: the organic cause, the specific symptoms, the specific course, and, the predictable outcome of each treatment. Once the underlying biological cause was understood, the mental malady could then be treated and the symptoms would disappear. During this same period, tremendous advances were being made in understanding the nervous system: brain pathology was discovered underlying some mental disorders cerebral arteriosclerosis, senile psychosis, some types of retardation. Medical researchers confident they would find biological causes for all mental disorder. However, gradually, the medical model of mental illness seemed inadequate: only certain disorders seemed to have biological causes. Ps(cid:455)(cid:272)hologi(cid:272)al theories of a(cid:271)(cid:374)or(cid:373)alit(cid:455) are ofte(cid:374) (cid:374)ot (cid:862)theories(cid:863) i(cid:374) the se(cid:374)se used (cid:271)(cid:455) hard s(cid:272)ie(cid:374)(cid:272)es: difficult to translate into testable empirical form.