PSY1022 Chapter Prescribed: PSY1022 – Readings – Week 5
26 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSY1022 – Readings – Week 5- Abnormal Psych
- in all mental disorders - there is a failure of adaptation to the environment -
aren’t adjusting well to the demands of daily life
- what is a mental illness?
• statistical rarity
•
o mental disorders are uncommon in the population
o cannot rely on statistical rarity to define mental disorders as some
mental illnesses are quite common
• subjective distress
•
o not all disorders generate distress
• impairment
•
o most mental disorders interfere with people’s ability to function in
everyday life
• societal disapproval
• biological dysfunction
•
o many mental disorders probably result from breakdowns or
failures of physiological systems
- historical concepts of mental illness
• the demonic and medical models
•
o during the middle ages many people in europe viewed mental
illnesses through the lens of a demonic model
o
▪ demonic model - view of mental illness in which odd
behaviour was attributed to evil spirits infesting the body
o over time people came to view mental illness as a physical
disorder requiring medical treatment - medical model - perception
that regarded mental illness as due to a physical disorder
requiring medical treatment
o
▪ european governments began housing psychologically
troubled individuals in asylums
• moral treatment - approach to mental illness calling for dignity, kindness
and responses for the mentally ill
• the modern era of psychiatric treatment
•
o by the 1960s and 19070s the advent of chlorpromazine and
similar medications became the primary impetus for a
governmental policy known as deinstitutionalisation - focused on
releasing hospitalised psychiatric patients into the community and
closing down mental hospitals
- psychiatric diagnoses across cultures
• culture bound syndromes
•
o disorders specific to a country or countries
• culture universality
•
o many mental disorders appear to exist in most if not all cultures
- special considerations in psychiatric classification and diagnosis
• misconceptions
- labouring theorists - scholars who argue that psychiatric diagnoses exert
powerful negative effects on people’s perceptions and behaviours
- Robins and Guze Criteria
• distinguishes that diagnosis from other similar diagnoses
• predicts diagnosed individuals’ performance on laboratory tests including
personality measures, neurotransmitter levels and brain imaging
findings
• predicts diagnosed individuals’ family history go psychiatric disorders
• predicts diagnosed individuals’ natural history - what tends to happen to
them over time
• predicts diagnosed individuals response to treatment
- DSM-5
• Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
• diagnostic criteria and decision rules
•
o decision rules on how many of the criteria need to be met for a
particular disorder
• thinking organic
•
o warns diagnosticians about physical or organic conditions that can
simulate certain physiological disorders
• other features
•
o prevalence of mental disorders - percentage of people within a
population who have a specific mental disorder
• criticisms
•
o not all diagnoses meet the robins and guze criteria for validity
o high level of comorbidity
o
▪ co-occurence of two or more diagnoses within the same
person
o its reliance on a categorical model
o
▪ model in which a mental disorder differs in normal function
in kind rather than degree
▪ has been argued that most disorders better fit a
dimensional model
▪
▪ model in which a mental disorder differs from
normal functioning in degree not kind
- normality and abnormality - a spectrum of severity
- mental illness and the law
• metal illness and violence
