Hey everyone, welcome back to bear it in mind. This video is going to summarize the whole of the psychopathology topic. This is designed to give you an overview, but if you want more in-depth explanations of psychopathology, you can find a full playlist of videos on each section on the bear it in mind YouTube channel which is linked in the description below.
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All right, let's dive in and summarize psychopathology. Psychopathology can be broken down into four sections. Definitions of abnormality, phobias, depression, and OCD.
Definitions of abnormality. Statistical infrequency defines abnormality as behaviors or traits that are rare or uncommon within a population. In a normal distribution, a bell-shaped curve, most people or scores fall around the middle near the mean.
The extreme scores are considered statistically abnormal and are found at the edges of the distribution, typically two standard deviations away from the mean. An IQ score below 70 or above 130 are considered statistically abnormal because they are statistically infrequent. One strength of this definition is that it's objective.
It relies on clear numerical cutff points rather than personal opinions, ensuring that all mental health professionals use the same standardized measurements which reduces subjectivity and increases accuracy. One limitation of this definition is that desirable behavior can be seen as abnormal. It can label desirable traits like high intelligence as abnormal despite not being linked to psychological distress.
The deviation from social norms definition of abnormality suggests that behavior is considered abnormal if it significantly differs from the accepted standards, values, or expectations of a particular society or culture. For example, talking to yourself in public might be viewed as abnormal. While some private self-t talk is normal, openly conversing with oneself in public could be seen as strange or inappropriate in many societies.
One strength of this definition is that it's flexible. It's more flexible than statistical infrequency as it adapts to societal standards rather than rigid numerical cutoffs allowing it to exclude desirable traits like high intelligence from being classified as abnormal. However, a limitation is that it's culturally relative.
What is considered abnormal varies across cultures leading to ethnosentrism where one culture standards are used to judge another. seen in Fernando's 1998 research where AfroCaribbean individuals in the UK were seven times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia due to a mismatch between cultural norms and diagnostic criteria. The failure to function adequately definition of abnormality refers to individuals who are unable to cope with the demands of everyday life.
Rosenhan and Seligman identified characteristics of those who fail to function adequately such as personal distress, irrationality, and an inability to perform everyday tasks. For example, someone may struggle to hold down a job due to severe anxiety or be unable to maintain basic hygiene and self-care due to depression. One strength of this definition is subjective experiences.
It considers an individual's subjective experiences acknowledging their emotions and feelings unlike statistical infrequency which reduces people to numbers on a distribution without accounting for personal distress. A limitation of this definition is that it misses some abnormal behavior. It fails to identify abnormal behaviors that do not cause distress such as psychopathic criminal behavior where individuals may function normally despite engaging in acts that are clearly abnormal.
Number four, deviation from ideal mental health. This definition suggests that a person is considered abnormal if they lack certain characteristics associated with psychological well-being. Jehood proposed key criteria for ideal mental health including an accurate perception of reality, selfactualization, a positive view of oneself, environmental mastery, autonomy, and resistance to stress.
When individuals fail to meet these criteria, they are seen as deviating from what is considered mentally healthy. For example, people with depression often struggle with low self-esteem, difficulty coping with stress, and lack of motivation or an inability to self-actualize. One strength of this definition is that it's comprehensive as it outlines a wide range of criteria that help identify mental health issues, set treatment goals, and provide tailored support for individuals.
A limitation though is that it's culturally relative. It's ethnosentric as it reflects western individualistic values like personal growth and autonomy making it less applicable to collectivist cultures that prioritize community and group well-being. Now we come to phobias and we start with the characteristics.
Remember you need to know the behavioral, emotional and cognitive characteristics. In other words, what people do, feel and think. For phobias, behavioral characteristics include panic and avoidance.
Individuals with phobias often experience panic when encountering their feared object or situation and may engage in avoidance behavior, deliberately steering clear of anything that triggers their anxiety. The emotional characteristics include anxiety and fear. Anxiety and fear are central emotional characteristics of phobias where individuals feel intense persistent dread and worry about the object or situation even when there is no immediate threat.
The cognitive characteristics include irrational beliefs. People with phobias often hold irrational beliefs, thinking the feared object or situation is far more dangerous than it actually is, which can increase their anxiety and avoidance. And a selective attention.
Individuals with phobias tend to exhibit selective attention, focusing disproportionately on the feared object or situation and ignoring other less threatening stimuli, which can reinforce the phobia. The behavioral explanation of phobias is the two process model. The first process is how phobias are acquired through classical conditioning, learning through association.
This means that a person has associated a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus which leads to the unconditioned response of fear. The previously neutral stimulus now triggers fear and becomes a conditioned stimulus. The second process is how phobias are maintained through operant conditioning.
Once the phobia is established, it is maintained through avoidance behavior. When an individual avoids the feared object or situation, they experience relief from anxiety, which negatively reinforces the avoidance behavior. Supporting evidence for the two process model of phobias comes from Watson and Raina's 1920 study of little Albert.
In this study, little Albert was exposed to a white rat, a neutral stimulus, which was paired with a loud bang, an unconditioned stimulus that naturally caused fear. As a result, little Albert developed a fear of the rat, which became a conditioned stimulus, showing how phobias can be acquired through associative learning. One strength of the behavioral explanation of phobias is how it can be practically applied to treat phobias.
Systematic desensitization is a treatment for phobias that involves relaxation training, creating an anxiety hierarchy and gradual exposure to the feared stimulus. Over time, this process helps replace the fear association with a relaxing one, reducing the phobia. A limitation of the two process model is that it doesn't account for the fact that not all phobias are learned.
Biological explanations such as Seligman's biological preparedness suggests that we may be predisposed to develop certain phobias due to genetic factors. This challenges the two process model by highlighting that some phobias may have a biological basis rather than being solely the result of learned experiences. Another limitation of the two process model is that it doesn't fully account for the cognitive aspects of phobias.
Cognitive explanations highlight the role of irrational thoughts such as overgeneralizing and catastrophizing in the development and maintenance of phobias. These distorted thinking patterns can create excessive anxiety and reinforce the fear response suggesting that cognitive factors play a crucial role in phobias which the two process model does not address comprehensively. The final part is the behavioral treatments for phobias and there are two.
First up is systematic desensitization. This countercond conditions a phobia by gradually exposing a person to their fear while teaching them to stay calm, associating their fear with relaxation over time. How does it work?
Relaxation. Person learns techniques like deep breathing or muscle relaxation to stay calm, helping them replace fear with a relaxed response. Anxiety hierarchy.
A step-by-step list of fear triggering situations ranked from least to most scary which guides the gradual exposure process. Gradual exposure. The person slowly works through the anxiety hierarchy facing each fear level while staying relaxed until the phobia weakens.
The other behavioral treatment of phobias is flooding. Well, how does this work? Immediate intense exposure.
Instead of slowly facing the fear like in systematic desensitization, the person is exposed to the most frightening version of it right away. No escape. The person stays in the situation until their panic response naturally fades.
This happens because the body can't stay in a high anxiety state forever. Over time, they realize that nothing bad happens. Extinction of fear.
In classical conditioning terms, their fear response, the condition response is weakened because the feared object, the conditioned stimulus no longer leads to danger. Their brain learns a new association. The feared thing is actually safe.
Let's now evaluate these behavioral treatments of phobias to wrap up this section. Supporting evidence for behavioral treatments comes from Lang and Lazik in 1963. Participants who underwent systematic desensitization for a snake phobia showed significantly reduced fear compared to a control group and the improvement was still present after 6 months suggesting long-term effectiveness.
Further evidence comes from Rothbatal in 2000 who used virtual reality exposure therapy to treat individuals with a fear of flying. They showed significant improvement comparable to traditional exposure therapy and the improvement was still present after several months. Ethics: Systematic desensitization is less traumatic than flooding because it offers gradual exposure at the patients pace and allows them to feel in control, making it suitable and more accessible for a wide range of people.
Flooding can cause significant emotional distress and may reinforce the phobia if not conducted properly, potentially leading to harm instead of treating the fear. Biological treatments such as anti-anxiety medication provide quick short-term relief by reducing the body's physiological fear response. However, they do not address the root cause of the phobia and may come with side effects.
As a result, a combined approach using both behavioral therapy and medication may be more effective for some individuals, offering both immediate symptom relief and long-term recovery. Next up, depression. And we're back to the characteristics for depression.
Behavioral characteristics include lack of energy and pleasure in all activities. Depression often leads to low energy levels causing withdrawal from work, school, and social activities due to a loss of interest and motivation, disruption to sleep and eating behavior. Depression can cause sleep disturbances, insomnia or excessive sleep, and changes in appetite leading to significant weight loss or gain.
The emotional characteristics include depressed lowered mood. Depression involves a continuous state of sadness unlike temporary low moods. Lowered self-esteem or self-worth.
Sufferers often have a negative self- view sometimes leading to self-hatred. The cognitive characteristics include difficulty concentrating. Depression can impair focus and decision-making making even simple tasks challenging.
Negative thinking. Sufferers often dwell on negativity, overlooking positive aspects of situations. Now we move on to explanations of depression.
And remember, the focus is on a cognitive explanation. As a reminder, the focus of the cognitive approach is on the way we think. So the reason why people are depressed according to these theories is because of their irrational thinking.
There are two cognitive theories of depression that you need to know. First up is Aaron Beck and his cognitive theory of depression. Beck's cognitive theory explains depression through three key elements.
Negative self schemas, cognitive distortions, and the negative triad. Negative self schemas develop from early experiences, leading individuals to view themselves negatively, which then influences their thinking patterns. These schemas create cognitive biases such as overgeneralization and catastrophizing which cause distorted negative interpretations of life events.
Together these maintain the negative triad where individuals have a pessimistic view of themselves, the world, and the future, reinforcing depressive symptoms. Next is Albert Ellis's ABC model, which explains depression by focusing on how irrational thoughts influence emotions and behavior. The model consists of an activating event, which is a situation like not receiving a reply to a text message.
B, beliefs, where a person interprets the event rationally or irrationally, and C, consequences, where irrational thoughts lead to negative emotions and depressive symptoms. According to Ellis, depression arises not from the event itself, but from irrational beliefs about the event, which trigger unhealthy emotional responses. In contrast, rational thoughts lead to healthier emotions and better mental well-being.
Supporting evidence comes from Tag Harvey Ital 2006 who found that clinically depressed individuals scored higher in irrational beliefs than non-depressed controls supporting cognitive theories of depression. And this study was carried out in Iraq and was a replication of western research. So points to the ability to apply this theory across cultures.
Further evidence comes from Vizler Ital who conducted a metaanalysis of 60 years of research and found a strong link between irrational beliefs and psychological distress including depression supporting the idea that irrational thinking plays a key role in explaining depression. A strength of the cognitive explanation of depression is its practical application in cognitive behavioral therapy, which builds on Ellis's ABC model by adding dd disputing to challenge irrational thoughts and replace them with more rational ones, helping individuals develop effective coping strategies. However, one of the limitations of cognitive theories of depression is that it places blame on the individual's thoughts rather than considering external factors.
potentially overlooking important situational causes that require practical solutions rather than just changing thinking patterns. Finally, we can compare it with an alternative explanation. The biological approach suggests that low serotonin levels contribute to depression as evidenced by the effectiveness of SSRIs indicating that a purely cognitive perspective may oversimplify the condition and that biological factors should also be considered.
The final part is a cognitive treatment for depression which is cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy based on Ellis's ABC model focuses on identifying and challenge irrational beliefs. It helps patients realize that these beliefs lead to negative emotional and behavioral consequences.
And through disputing these irrational beliefs using logical disputing, empirical disputing, and pragmatic disputing, they can replace them with more rational thoughts. This process ultimately improves their emotional well-being and behavior. Similarly to Ellis, cognitive behavioral therapy based on Beck's model focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns that contribute to depression.
CBT helps individuals challenge and change these negative thought patterns through thought catching, identifying and questioning irrational beliefs, replacing them with more realistic and balanced thoughts. patient as scientist. The patient generates hypotheses to test how accurate their rational thoughts are.
Did what they think would happen happen? Evidence is presented for and against their different irrational thoughts. Behavioral activation encouraging engagement in activities that improve mood, such as hobbies and social interactions.
Homework assignments. keeping thought diaries or testing negative beliefs in real life situations to develop more positive thinking patterns. Let's now evaluate the cognitive treatment of depression to wrap up this section.
Supporting evidence for CBT comes from Marchal in 2007 who found that CBT drug treatment and their combination all improve depression with the combined treatment being most effective at 36 weeks, highlighting the effectiveness of CBT in treating depression, especially alongside medication. A limitation of CBT for depression is that it requires long-term commitment, which can be difficult for some patients. Depression often leads to low energy, poor concentration, and feelings of hopelessness, which can make it challenging for individuals to engage consistently in therapy sessions or complete assigned tasks like thought diaries.
As a result, some patients may struggle to see progress and discontinue treatment early, reducing its overall effectiveness. We can also evaluate cognitive treatments of depression with comparisons with other approaches. CBT avoids negative side effects and withdrawal symptoms that come with biological treatments with drugs, making it a safer and more stable option for patients.
But drug treatments work faster than CBT and require less motivation and commitment, which can make them a more practical option for some individuals. However, CBT is more empowering than biological treatments through medication as it actively involves patients in challenging and changing their thoughts, giving them a greater sense of control over their depression rather than being reliant on a drug. Finally, we come to OCD and we're back to the characteristics for the final time.
Remember, you need to know the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive characteristics. In other words, what people do, feel, and think. For OCD, behavioral characteristics include compulsions, repetitive behaviors like excessive handwashing that individuals with OCD feel compelled to perform, reduced social activity.
Anxiety from OCD can hinder normal relationships and social engagement or avoidance. People with OCD may avoid situations or places that trigger obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors. The emotional characteristics include anxiety and distress.
Obsessive thoughts cause intense anxiety and distress. The individual may feel overwhelmed by the need to perform certain compulsions to reduce the anxiety triggered by these thoughts. Shame.
There is often a sense of shame or embarrassment about the compulsions or thoughts, especially because sufferers may recognize that their behavior is not rational or socially acceptable leading to emotional discomfort and isolation. The cognitive characteristics include obsessive thoughts, unwanted intrusive thoughts or urges that repeatedly enter the mind, understanding irrationality. Sufferers are aware that their worstcase scenarios are unlikely, but they struggle to control these irrational thoughts.
Now, we move on to explanations of OCD. The focus here is on a biological explanation, and you need to know a genetic and a neural explanation. The genetic explanation suggests that OCD is inherited through genes that make individuals more vulnerable with research suggesting that relatives of OCD sufferers have a higher risk of developing the condition.
Specific genes such as the comp gene linked to dopamine regulation and the search gene affecting serotonin levels are believed to contribute to OCD by influencing neurotransmitter activity in the brain. For the neural explanation, there are a couple of options. We could talk about this in terms of neurotransmitter levels.
In OCD, dopamine is thought to be too high leading to increased compulsive behaviors due to its role in reward and repetitive actions. In contrast, serotonin levels are believed to be too low, which may cause heightened anxiety and intrusive thoughts, as serotonin is crucial for mood regulation and impulse control. Another option as a neural explanation is the worry circuit.
The worry circuit in OCD involves the orbital frontal cortex, which detects potential threats and sends signals to the cordate nucleus in the basil ganglia to filter out unnecessary worries. In OCD, the cordate nucleus is believed to be faulty, failing to suppress these signals, leading to overactivity in the phalamus, which reinforces obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Supporting evidence for the role of genetics comes from Neesatital in 2010, who found that monozygotic twins had a 68% concordance rate for OCD compared to 31% in dzygotic twins, supporting the genetic basis of OCD.
as MZ twins share more DNA and showed a higher likelihood of both developing the disorder. Supporting evidence for the neural explanation comes from Buickal in 2013 who found that non-medicated OCD patients had greater activity and connectivity in the orbital frontal cortex with activity levels positively correlated with OCD symptom severity supporting the role of the orbital frontal cortex in the disorder. However, one way of criticizing the biological explanations of OCD is that it's not just biology, but also the environment.
And this brings us to the diiathesis stress model. The diiathesis stress model suggests that genetics create a vulnerability to OCD, but environmental stresses such as trauma or life events trigger its development. This was supported by Chrome in 2007 who found that over 50% of their OCD patients had a trauma in their past highlighting that biological factors alone cannot fully explain OCD.
The biological explanation for OCD can be criticized for being deterministic. This is because it suggests that genetics and neural factors cause OCD leaving individuals with no control over their behavior which can be pessimistic and anxietyinducing and limits the role of free will in managing the condition. The final part is the biological treatment of OCD which is drug therapy.
One drug used to treat OCD are called SSRI, which stand for selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and are a common drug treatment for OCD that work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain. They do this by blocking the re-uptake process, meaning serotonin stays in the sinapse for longer, allowing for improved communication between neurons. This helps regulate mood and anxiety, reducing the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors characteristic of OCD.
Supporting evidence comes from Sumroal in 2009 who reviewed 17 studies with over 3,000 participants and found that SSRIs were more effective than placeos in reducing OCD symptoms within six to 13 weeks of treatment. However, a limitation of biological treatments for OCD is that they address the symptoms rather than the underlying cause. As research by Chrome found that over 50% of OCD patients had experienced a past trauma, suggesting other factors may contribute to the disorder besides biology.
A further limitation of drug treatment for OCD is side effects. As summer in 2009 found that SSRIs often cause nausea, headaches, and insomnia, making cognitive behavioral therapy a potentially more favorable alternative. Finally, we can evaluate biological treatments of OCD with other approaches.
Cognitive treatments such as CBT are more empowering than drug treatments for OCD as it actively involves patients in challenging their thoughts, giving them a greater sense of control over their condition. However, drug therapy works faster than CBT and requires less motivation and commitment, making it a more accessible treatment option for some patients. And that's the whole of the psychopathology topic.
Now, don't forget to test yourself with this video on psychopathology to find out what you know and don't know. And for more resources to help you with Alevel psychology so that you study smarter and stress less, check out the bear it in mind website. I hope you enjoyed this video and we'll see you in the next one.
