Study guide: Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology

📋 Course Outline

1. Mental Disorders and Their Burden
2. Stigma and Social Representations
3. Borderline Personality Disorder
4. Public Attitudes and Eating Disorders
5. Definitions of Psychopathology
6. Normality and Pathology

📖 1. Mental Disorders and Their Burden

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Mental disorder: OMS - An abnormal set of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, behaviours, and relationships with others.

★ Must-know

• The WHO estimates that 25% of the world’s population experiences a mental disorder during their lifetime. - OMS

Further detail

• The World Health Organization (WHO), founded in 1948 as a specialized United Nations health agency, comprises 194 member states.

• Almeida-Filho et al. (1997) reported that more than 25% of individuals may experience one or more mental or behavioural disorders during their lifetime.

• The WHO reported that 79% of people with mental disorders had more than one disorder. - OMS, 2001

• Mental illness is described as involving substantial suffering and very high economic costs.

• In Gurin (1990), 90% of respondents said they had overcome a significant health, emotional, dependency, or lifestyle problem during the previous year.

📖 2. Stigma and Social Representations

★ Must-know

• People with mental disorders may experience exclusion, discrimination, and stigma in everyday life.

• Goffman identified three types of stigma: (Erving Goffman, 1975):

  • bodily deformity
  • character flaws
  • tribal stigma

📌 The 2005–2006 French Senate information report states that not every dangerous person has a mental disorder, not every person with a mental disorder is automatically dangerous, and dangerousness is not necessarily permanent. - Goujon & Gautier, rapport d’information, 2005-2006

• The recommendations include: (Roelandt & Caria, 2007): explaining the importance of mental well-being, combating stigma, discrimination, and inequality while supporting affected people and families, developing integrated systems for promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, care, and social reintegration, ensuring competent and effective staff, using patients’ and carers’ expertise in service planning

Further detail

• Pignon et al. (2017) link stigma toward psychiatric disorders to social representations conveyed by the media, particularly after violent news stories involving people with mental illness.

• The Declaration of Helsinki, adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964, sets out ethical principles and recommendations for medical research involving human beings. - Association Médicale Mondiale, déclaration d’Helsinki

📖 3. Borderline Personality Disorder

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Borderline personality disorder: American Psychiatric Association - A pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, with marked impulsivity, beginning in early adulthood and occurring across contexts; at least five specified manifestations are required.

★ Must-know

• Greiner et al. (2022) found that borderline personality disorder was often poorly understood despite the widespread use of its name, and was considered one of the most stigmatized mental disorders.

Further detail

• Three DSM-V manifestations are: (American Psychiatric Association):

  • frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
  • unstable, intense relationships alternating between excessive idealization and devaluation
  • marked, persistent instability of self-image or sense of self

• The DSM-V includes impulsivity in at least two potentially harmful areas, such as spending, sexuality, or substance use, among the manifestations of borderline personality disorder. - American Psychiatric Association

• The DSM-V manifestations include repeated suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-injury, and affective instability caused by marked mood reactivity, such as intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting hours and rarely more than a few days. - American Psychiatric Association

• Other DSM-V manifestations include: (American Psychiatric Association): chronic feelings of emptiness, intense and inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger, transient stress-related paranoid ideation, severe dissociative symptoms

• Greiner et al. (2022) surveyed 126 francophone care professionals: 69 psychiatrists or child psychiatrists, 19 mental-health nurses, 23 psychologists, and 14 social workers.

• In the Greiner et al. (2022) sample, knowledge gaps concerned the 1:1 sex ratio, a suicide rate of 5–10%, and recurrent harmful behaviours reported in 70% of patients, with knowledge differing by profession.

• In the Greiner et al. (2022) sample, 37% did not feel competent to care for a patient with borderline personality disorder, 20.47% would prefer to avoid such patients, 13.38% did not like them, 56.1% believed they could make a positive difference, and 28.48% considered the prognosis poor.

• Negative representations of borderline personality disorder may reduce quality of care and worsen prognosis, which makes examining and correcting those representations important. - Greiner et al., 2022

📖 4. Public Attitudes and Eating Disorders

📝 Essential Points

• Rousseau, Callahan, and Chabrol (2012) studied adolescents’ representations of eating disorders in a sample of 942 participants aged 13 to 18 years. - Rousseau, Callahan, et Chabrol

• The study by Rousseau, Callahan, and Chabrol (2012) examined adolescents’ representations of weight-control strategies for anorexia and bulimia, as well as physical and psychological characteristics associated with these disorders. - Rousseau, Callahan, et Chabrol

• The 2004 SMPG survey, conducted for the French Ministry of Health and Social Protection and analysed by Drees, examined attitudes associated with the terms “mad,” “mentally ill,” and “depressed.” - Drees-Asep-CCOMS-EPSM-Lille-Métropole, Enquête SMPG-Ministère de la Santé et de la protection sociale

• Knowledge of the general population’s representations of a mental disorder can be useful when designing prevention programmes.

📖 5. Definitions of Psychopathology

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Psychopathology: Larousse, Le Grand Dictionnaire de la psychologie, 1999 - The Grand Dictionary of Psychology defines psychopathology as the science of mental suffering, considered both a branch of psychology and a theoretical reflection on psychiatric clinical practice.
• Psychopathology: Bouvet & Boudoukha, 22 grandes notions en psychologie clinique et psychopathologie, 2014 - Bouvet and Boudoukha define psychopathology as the science studying psychopathological behaviours or conduct through clinical and experimental methods, focused on understanding and knowing mental illnesses.
• Psychopathology: Piéron defines psychopathology as the study of mental disorders in their description, classification, mechanisms, and development.
• Psychopathology: Fouques et Bioy, Psychologie Clinique et Psychopathologie, 2020 - Fouques and Bioy define psychopathology as the description, study, and understanding of functioning designated abnormal, whether or not it relates to mental illness.

★ Must-know

📌 Bouvet and Boudoukha distinguish psychopathology, which focuses on understanding and knowing mental illnesses, from psychiatry, which also encompasses therapy, prophylaxis, and rehabilitation. - Bouvet & Boudoukha, 22 grandes notions en psychologie clinique et psychopathologie, 2014

Further detail

• The disciplines named include: (Capdevielle & Doucet):

  • psychiatry
  • psychology
  • psychoanalysis
  • sociology
  • linguistics

• Fouques and Bioy describe psychopathology as a discipline transversal to psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychoanalysis. - Fouques et Bioy, Psychologie Clinique et Psychopathologie, 2020

📖 6. Normality and Pathology

📝 Essential Points

• The four conceptions of normality are:

  • statistical
  • ideal or societal
  • functional
  • subjective

• The statistical conception of normality is illustrated by the Gaussian curve applied to IQ, for which the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15.