Name: Khadijah Habeebah 😉

Psychological problems

01. Suggest two changes in behaviour often seen in people who are diagnosed with unipolar depression.

Reduced self-confidence and loss in appetite

[2 marks]

02. Read the following statements about mental health. Decide whether each statement is True or False. Tick
one box for each statement.
[3 marks]

True False
An intervention that could be offered to treat Catherine’s addiction is
aversion therapy
Catherine may have a genetic vulnerability to addiction.
One biological explanation for Catherine’s addiction is that she is
influenced by her peers

03. Suggest one social effect of significant mental health problems in society.
[2 marks]

There are many implications for the economy as looking after people with mental health costs a
lot of money. McCrone et al in 2008, found a report which suggests the direct cost of mental
health in England is about £22 billion a year and is proportionate to the amount spent on
education. This cost of money the government is pending is increasing as mortality rates are
lower since people are living longer.
04. Calculate the median rating of effectiveness for the group that was treated with both medication and
CBT. Show your workings.
[2 marks]

5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10

8 is the median

05. The median rating of effectiveness for the medication group was 6. Use your answer from question 21.1 to
sketch a suitable diagram of the median ratings for effectiveness of treatment on the graph paper below.
Provide a suitable title and labels for your diagram.

[4 marks]
 14

12

10

Effectiveness
8

0
Medication Medication + CBT

Type of treatment
06. Give one-strength of the sampling method used in this study.
[1 mark]
It was a quick way to collect participants.
06. What do the results of this study suggest about the effectiveness of using both CBT and medication to treat
unipolar depression? Explain your answer.
[2 marks]
Those who had taken medication alongside CBT showed greater levels of recovery and
remission. This shows that CBT is a useful addition to treatment and is more effective than
reducing depressive symptoms than antidepressants medication alone. This can be seen as those
who had CBT as well as medication had a median of 8 whereas those who had only medication,
had a median of 6.

07. Describe one study of hereditary factors in addiction and evaluate the research method used in that study.

[9 marks]
Kaij’s twin study of alcohol abuse in 1960 conducted the first systematic study to look at the
relationship of alcohol in twins. His aim was to see whether alcoholism could be explained in
terms of hereditary factors. He wanted to investigate if there was a genetic vulnerability in
children.

The study looked at male twins from Skane in Sweden. These twins were identified by the
temperance board. The temperance board registered and followed individuals who had problems
with alcohol abuse. 310 male twins were identified where at least one twin was registered with
the board. Kaij conducted interviews with those registered by the board and sometimes had
interviews with close relatives to obtain information about the individual’s drinking habits. Kaij
identified 48 as identical pair of twins and 126 as non-identical. In some twin pairs, both were
registered by the board whereas in others, only one was registered.

The percentage of those who had a co-twin registered was significantly higher for identical than
those that were fraternal. 61% of the identical twins were both alcoholic whereas 39% of the non-
identical twins were both alcoholic. The data found shows that alcoholism isn’t entirely due to
genetic vulnerability but played a role in alcoholism. The increased social problem among
alcoholic twins suggests that nurture and environmental factors contribute to alcoholism as well.

One weakness of this study would be that the explanation may be misleading because some
people assume that a biological explanation means that inheritance causes the addiction to be
inevitable. Genes increase the risk of addiction but isn’t the only factor. The evidence provided by
Kaij showed that nature as well as nurture subsidises towards addiction. Identical twins are often
treated the same so these explanations imply that genes are more influential that they actually are.
One strength of this study is that his results have been supported by later research. Kendler et al in
1997 conducted a controlled study using much larger sample which included 2516 individual
twin from the Swedish board. They also found that if one co-twin was alcoholic, their twin was
also more likely to be alcoholic if they were identical rather than fraternal. (48% monozygotic
twins compared to 33% dizygotic twins) the research generally supports the view that genetic
factors have a major influence on alcoholism for both males and females.
 Marks Feedback Self assessment
Psychological
problems
Q1 /2
Q2 /3
Q3 /2
Q4.1 /2
Q4.2 /4
Q4.3 /1
Q5 /2
Q6 /9
Total /25