Class notes Psychology 223 (PSY223)

Abnormal Psychology

Abnormal psychology
 What is abnormal psychology?
 Who determines "normal" versus "abnormal" psychology?
 What makes someone have a mental disorder?
Psychopathology is the study, nature and development of abnormal/disorders
 Affect
 Behaviour
 Cognition
Functionally, abnormal/disorder is usually determined by the presence of several
characteristics at one time such as:
 Statistical frequency
 Violation of norms
 Personal suffering
 Disability or dysfunction
 Unexpectedness


History of Mental Health Disorders
 History helps us understand the state of current mental health
 Somatogensis
 Hippocrates separated medical from magic, religion and
superstition
 Demonology
 Loss of reason = witchcraft
 Asylums
 Bedlam and mental health tourism
 Moral treatment
 Move toward humanitarianism
Classification systems
 Kraeplin's conceptualization of syndromes is the precursor to modern
classification systems
Scientific
 Evidence based, collaborative, improvement/recovery focus
 Always evolving


Paradigms
 A paradigm is a scientific conceptual framework
 Historically, there are 4 main paradigms in abnormal psychology

,  Integrative approaches are more widely accepted today in abnormal
psychology

Biological Paradigm
 Medical model or disease model
o Mental health disorders are biological process
o More relevant for some disorders than others
 Dementia versus personality disorders
 Genetics and neuroscience
o Behavior genetics: genotypes and phenotype
 Study through families, twins and adoptees
o Neuroscience: the role of neurotransmitters
 Treatment: biological intervention
o Medications, surgery and others


Cognitive Behavior Paradigm
 Behaviourism: focus on observable behaviour and learned responses
o Classical and operant conditioning
 Behaviour Therapy
o Counter conditioning, exposure and operant conditioning
 Still widely used, often in isolation and often
using a cognitive behaviour focus
 Children, depression
 How people categorize and conceptualize experiences, how they make
sense of them and how the relate past to current
o Our perceptions and meanings when making sense of
information
o Schemas: organized network of accumulated knowledge
(can be identified and reorganized)
 Used today, efficient and effective
o Cognitive behavioural therapy


Psychoanalytic Paradigm (not used often today)
 Psychopathology from unconscious conflicts
o Brief psychodynamic therapy and interpersonal process
therapy
o Defense mechanisms
Humanistic Paradigm
 Improve insight and awareness
o Improve insight and awareness

, o Idea of unconditional positive regard remains an important
in therapy
Additional Influences: Psychosocial
 Factors outside self influencing mental health
o Family: parenting styles, relationship discord, and parent
illness
 Adverse childhood events accumulate and predict
adult and mental health
o Peers: status and victimization
Additional Influences: Culture
 A consideration of group characteristics is important and is part of a
specialty called minority mental health
o The major paradigms have on occasion been revised to assist
clinicians in their work with people from different cultural
backgrounds
 Psychology was developed within a mjority culture and today still
struggles to be more culturally responsive
 Culture affects how people present, understand and support mental
health disorders
 Varies among cultures and among individuals who identify with the
culture
 Concept of "cultural humility"
o Do not make assumptions about culture, collaborative with
person, family, system you are in
Additional Influences: Psychosocial
- factors outside self influencing mental health
 Peers
 Status and victimization
 Family: parenting styles, relationship discord and parent
illness
 Importance of "adverse childhood events"
 Accumulate and predict adult physical mental health
Social Determinants of Mental Health
 Poverty
 Homelessness
 Unemployment
 Isolation


Integrative Paradigms
 Two main integrative paradigms:

,  Diathesis-stress Paradigm
 Biopsychosocial Paradigm
 Integrative paradigms allow for the additional factors that are important
to understanding the client/family/system but also allow for more
traditional paradigms to be integrated
 Both paradigms emphasize the interplay among the biological,
psychological and social environmental perspectives
Diathesis-Stress Paradigm
 Not limited to one particular school of thought, but focuses on the
interaction between predisposition toward disease (diathesis) and
environmental, or life, disturbances (stress)
 Constitutional predisposition toward illness:
 Any characteristics or set of characteristics
that increases a person's chance of
developing a disorder
 Genetic, psychological, environmental
factors can be predisposing to the
development of mental disorder
 Possessing the diathesis for a disorder
increases a person's risk of developing it but
does not guarantee that the disorder will
develop.
 It is a 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
Biopsychosocial paradigm
 Biological psychological and social factors are conceptualized as
different levels of analysis or subsystems within the paradigm
 Also not limited to a particular school of thought
 Explanations for causes of disorders typically involved
complex interactions among many biological,
psychological and socio-environmental and
sociocultural factors