Scheda di revisione: Week 1 and 2 AB Psych

📋 Course Outline

1. Defining Abnormal Behaviour
2. Mental Disorder Concepts
3. Rosenhan’s Diagnostic Study
4. Classifying Psychological Disorders
5. Fear and Anxiety Disorders
6. Vulnerability and Anxiety
7. Specific Anxiety Disorders

📖 1. Defining Abnormal Behaviour

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Abnormal behaviour : Behaviour that does not adhere to the societal standard of what is considered normal, although no universally accepted definition exists.

★ Must-know

• Norm violation classifies behaviour as abnormal when it is negatively evaluated as socially unacceptable or inconsistent with social expectations.

📌 Distress refers to the suffering caused by behaviour or mental experiences for the individual, whereas dysfunction refers to interference with effective everyday functioning.

📌 Statistical rarity, norm violation, distress and dysfunction must be considered together because none of the four criteria is necessary or sufficient on its own to identify abnormal behaviour.

Further detail

• Statistical rarity classifies behaviour according to how infrequently it occurs in society, but it can also include positive deviations.

• The four criteria are tied to social norms and expectations that vary across cultures and historical periods, which can lead to oppression of non-conformist behaviour.

📖 2. Mental Disorder Concepts

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Mental disorder : A syndrome involving clinically significant disturbances in cognition, emotion regulation or behaviour that reflect dysfunction in psychological, biological or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.
• Syndrome : A grouping of signs and symptoms that frequently co-occur and may indicate a common pathogenesis, course, familial pattern or treatment selection.

★ Must-know

• According to DSM-5, mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational or other important activities.

📌 DSM-5 excludes expectable or culturally approved responses to common stressors and socially deviant behaviour or conflicts with society unless they result from dysfunction in the individual.

• Wakefield conceptualises mental disorder as requiring both a factual component, an internal dysfunction, and a value component, harm to the individual.

Further detail

• Wakefield’s account is difficult to apply because the normal evolutionary functions of some psychological processes are uncertain, and abilities such as reading may be too evolutionarily recent to have natural functions.

📖 3. Rosenhan’s Diagnostic Study

★ Must-know

• In Rosenhan’s first study, eight healthy pseudo-patients reported hearing unfamiliar voices, were admitted to 12 psychiatric hospitals, behaved normally after admission and remained diagnosed until discharge.

• The pseudo-patients were diagnosed as having schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis and remained in hospital from 7 to 53 days, usually being discharged with the label schizophrenia in remission.

• Rosenhan concluded that psychiatric labels strongly influenced how staff interpreted behaviour and that hospital patients experienced depersonalisation, loss of autonomy and stigma.

Further detail

• In Rosenhan’s second study, hospital staff identified several genuine patients as possible imposters even though Rosenhan sent no additional pseudo-patients.

• Rosenhan’s study drew attention to diagnostic and patient-rights problems, but its deception raised ethical concerns and later researchers questioned its methods and reporting.

📖 4. Classifying Psychological Disorders

★ Must-know

📌 Medical classification generally assumes a clear qualitative boundary between health and disorder, whereas psychological health and disorder are often viewed as existing on a continuum with an arbitrary cutoff.

• Psychological disorders show high comorbidity, meaning that one individual can meet criteria for more than one disorder.

Further detail

• Diagnostic instability occurs when an individual’s diagnosis changes from one psychological disorder to another over time.

• Lack of treatment specificity means that the same treatment can be effective for supposedly distinct conditions, such as antidepressant medication for depression and chronic pain.

💡 Memory Hook

Psychological disorders are dimensional and overlapping, unlike many medical disorders

📖 5. Fear and Anxiety Disorders

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Fear : An immediate alarm reaction triggered by perceived danger that prepares the body to deal with that danger.
• Anxiety : Apprehension about a future threat and includes physiological, cognitive and behavioural responses to perceived danger.

★ Must-know

📌 A true alarm occurs when the fight-or-flight response is triggered by an immediate dangerous threat, whereas a false alarm occurs without a direct physical threat.

• The fight-or-flight response increases heart rate, metabolism, blood pressure, breathing and muscle tension to prepare the body to freeze, flee or fight.

📌 Anxiety becomes clinically disordered when fear or anxiety is excessive, occurs in inappropriate circumstances and causes debilitating interference with relationships, study or work.

Further detail

• Adrenaline, also called epinephrine, is released into the bloodstream during the fear response and initiates bodily changes.

📖 6. Vulnerability and Anxiety

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Triple vulnerability : Barlow’s triple vulnerability consists of biological vulnerability, generalised psychological vulnerability and specific psychological vulnerability.

★ Must-know

• Biological vulnerability includes an inherited predisposition toward anxiety and depressive disorders, described as the general neurotic syndrome.

• Generalised psychological vulnerability includes beliefs that the world is dangerous and that events are beyond personal control, which can be fostered by early stress or loss.

• Conditioning creates specific psychological vulnerability when a conditioned stimulus is paired with an adverse unconditioned stimulus, producing an expectation of threat and a conditioned fear response.

Further detail

• After a dog bite, avoidance of the dog can be negatively reinforced because escaping reduces anxiety, and generalisation can extend fear to other dogs and places associated with dogs.

• The initial response to the dog bite situation is a true alarm, whereas later alarms triggered by the dog or related cues are false alarms.

📖 7. Specific Anxiety Disorders

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Specific phobia : A marked and persistent fear triggered by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation.
• Panic disorder : Involves recurrent unexpected panic attacks.
• Agoraphobia : Anxiety about situations in which escape may be difficult or help unavailable if panic symptoms occur, including public transport, open or enclosed spaces, crowds and being outside home alone.
• Social anxiety disorder : Marked fear of social situations involving possible scrutiny, including interactions, being observed or performing.
• Generalised anxiety disorder : Involves excessive anxiety and worry about several events or activities.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Core Abnormality Criteria

Criterion	Meaning	Example or limitation
Statistical rarity	Infrequent occurrence in society	Can include positive deviations such as genius
Norm violation	Negative social evaluation	Can oppress non-conformist behaviour
Distress	Suffering experienced by the individual	Some disorders, such as mania, may feel pleasant
Dysfunction	Interference with everyday functioning	May reflect problematic social expectations