Psychopathology I

1st Week

- Defining Mental Disorders

¤  How would a mental health clinician determine anyone has
a psychological disorder?

¤  Four characteristics of mental disorders:

1.  Psychological distress

2.  Psychological disability

3.  Violation of social norms

4.  Dysfunction
DSM-5

-  The disorder occurs within the individual.

-  It involves clinically significant difficulties in thinking, feeling,

or behaving.

-  It involves dysfunction in processes that support mental

functioning.

-  It is not a culturally specific reaction to an event (e.g., death

of a loved one).

-  It is not primarily a result of social deviance or conflict with

society.
¤  A pattern of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that causes
significant personal distress, significant impairment in daily
life, and/or significant risk of harm, any of which is unusual
for the context and culture in which it arises.

¤  Notice the word “significant” in the definition, which

indicates that the diagnosis of psychological disorder is
applied only when the symptoms have a substantial
effect on a person’s life.
Personal Distress:

¤  Distress can be defined as anguish or suffering --- Unpleasant feelings that you may have
when you feel overwhelmed.

¤  Fatique, sadness, anxiety, fear, anger etc.

¤  The state of being distressed is not abnormal—it is the degree of distress or the
circumstances in which the distress arises that mark a psychological disorder.

¤  Blood-injection

*** Most psychological disorders are simply extreme expressions of otherwise normal
emotions, behaviors, and cognitive processes.

¤  Not all mental disorders cause distress

¤  Not all behavior that causes distress is disordered.

¤  Some people with psychological disorders exhibit their distress; some people not.
Disability

¤  Impairment: a significant reduction of an individual’s ability to

function in some area of life.

¤  A person with a psychological disorder may be impaired in

functioning at school, at work, or in relationships.

¤  The degree of impairment indicates a psychological disorder.

¤  Like distress, however, disability alone cannot be used to define

mental disorder.

¤  Ex. bulimia nervosa

Violation of Social Norms

¤  Social norms: good–bad, right–wrong, justified–unjustified,

and acceptable–unacceptable

¤  Infrequent & deviation from average.

¤  The behavior is abnormal if it violates social norms --- cultural

differences.

¤  Schizophrenia

¤  The repetitive rituals performed by people with obsessive-

compulsive disorder
Psychological Dysfunction:

¤  It refers to a breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or

behavioral functioning.

¤  DSM: ‘Behavioral, psychological, and biological

dysfunctions are all interrelated.’

¤  For example: blood-injection phobia

¤  Continuum --- category (present or absent)

*** It is difficult to define normal and abnormal.

Behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunctions that

are unexpected in their cultural context and associated
with present distress and impairment in functioning, or
increased risk of suffering, death, pain, or impairment.

¤  Psychopathology: The scientific study of psychological

disorders. The subfield of psychology that addresses the
causes and progression of psychological disorders.
¤  Presenting problem--- why the person came to the clinic?

¤  Clinical description --- represents the unique combination of behaviors, thoughts, and
feelings that make up a specific disorder.

¤  Prevalence : how many people in the population as a whole have the disorder?

¤  Incidence: Statistics on how many new cases occur during a given period, such as a
year, represent the incidence of the disorder.

¤  Course (the disorder’s individual pattern): chronic (they tend to last a long time -
schizophrenia) , episodic (the individual is likely to recover within a few months only to
suffer a recurrence of the disorder at a later time – this pattern may repeat throughout a
person’s life), time-limited (the disorder will improve without treatment in a relatively short
period

¤  Onset: acute (they begin suddenly), insidious (develop gradually over an extended
period)

¤  Prognosis (the anticipated course of the disorder)

¤  Etiology (the study of origins) why a disoder begins? Biological, psychological and social
dimensions.
¤  *** Norms about psychopathology can shift –
homosexuality

¤  Over time, because the field is continually evolving, the

disorders discussed in books like this will undoubtedly
change, and so will the definition of mental disorder.
Stigma

¤  It refers to the destructive beliefs and attitudes held by a

society that are ascribed to groups considered different
in some manner, such as people with mental illness.

***Discrimination --- What kind of words are used by people

to describe a psychopathology that create stigma?

¤  Four characteristics of stigma:

1. A label is applied to a group of people that distinguishes
them from others (e.g., “crazy”).

2. The label is linked to deviant or undesirable attributes by

society (e.g., crazy people are dangerous).

3. People with the label are seen as essentially different from

those without the label, contributing to an “us” versus “them”
mentality (e.g., we are not like those crazy people).

4. People with the label are discriminated against unfairly (e.g.,

a clinic for crazy

¤  What can we do to prevent stigmatization?