Definition of abnormality essay

Revision Notes- Abnormality
Definition of abnormality * Failure to function adequately- An assessment of an individual whose disability prevents them from pursing normal goals and activities. Rosenhan and Seligman (89)-7 characteristics;
Suffering- most abnormal individuals report that they are suffering
Maladaptiveness- danger to self (usually occurs as a result of lacking relevant knowledge and skill)
Vivid/unconventional behaviour- ways in which abnormal individuals tend to behave often differs substantially from most people.
Unpredictability/loss of control- the behaviour of abnormal people is often very variable, uncontrolled and inappropriate.
Irrationality/ incomprehensibility- others cannot understand why anyone would choose to behave in this way
Observer discomfort- social behaviour is governed by a number of unwritten norms or rules of behaviour (e.g. not standing too close to someone while talking)
Violation of moral/Ideal standards- behaviour may be judged ‘abnormal’ when it violates established more standard
Evaluation
* Criticised as it depends heavily on subjective assessments- e.g. people who engage in behaviour that is maladaptive may not consider themselves to be abnormal (adrenaline sports). * Does not sufficiently differentiate abnormal behaviour from behaviour that is non-conformist.

* Deviation from social norms-Behaviour that violates implicit and explicit rules and moral standards of a given society.
Evaluation
* Norms not fixed-change over time. * Abnormal, eccentric or criminal? * Role of context including culture * Risk of abuse * Deviation from mental ideal health- A deviation from the ideal characteristic that people should possess if they are to live optimally. –Marie Jahoda’s 6 characteristics;
Small- Self actualisation
People-Personal growth
In-Integration
America-Autonomy
Poo-Perception of reality
Everywhere-Environment mastery
Evaluation
* Criticised for being subjective as it may differ from person to person and there may be no agreement between people as to what constitutes normal or ideal mental health. * Culture bound by Western ideals of self-fulfilment and individuality (culture relativism) * Most people may fail on some criteria

Biological Model * Assumes that psychological and behavioural abnormalities have biological causes. * Biological causes include genes, infection, neuro-anatomy and biochemistry. * Genetic concept-supported by Kendler et al.(85)-relatives with schizophrenia and Gottesman (91)-Identical twins * Infection that gets into the brain can cause widespread damage and if the brain is damaged then a person may start to have abnormal experiences or to behave in abnormal ways. (Flu is linked with schizophrenia- (Barr et al. (90)). * Bio-chemistry- Brain relies on hundreds of different chemicals all being in the correct balance. These chemicals (neurotransmitters and hormones) are used to send messages round the brain and nervous system, too much or too little of them can cause the brain to function abnormally. Schizophrenia has been associated with an excess activity in the neurotransmitter dopamine. * Neuro-anatomy- illustrates that schizophrenia is cause by abnormality in the structure of the brain; these abnormality could be inherited. Concept supported by the case study of Phineas Gage.
Evaluation
* Criticised for being reductionist as it simplifies complex behaviour to its simplest form. * Deterministic- As you have no choice over your behaviour or the development of a mental disorder. * Ethical issue –Labelling someone mentally ill as Szaz illustrates that apart from identified disease of the brain, most so-called mental disorders are really problems of living. * Objective- Based on mature biological science.

Biological treatments;
Drugs- for anxiety, depression and schizophrenia
ECT- for severe depression
Psychosurgery- for severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Evaluation
* Drugs-sometimes effective but side effect, might treat only symptom and ethical issues. * ECT- quick and sometimes effective, used to prevent suicide, mode of action unclear and ethical issues * Psychosurgery- used as last resort and controversial.

Psychodynamic Model * Signifies the existence of the unconscious. * Psychological disorders are cause by emotional problems in the unconscious mind, the cause of these problems can be traced back to early childhood and the relationship between the child and parents is a crucial factor of mental health. * 3 main part to the concept; * The Id- present from birth and is the pleasure drive. The Ego- present from the age of 2 and deals with reality by balancing out the ego and superego. The Superego- present from the age of 5 and is morality (knowing the difference between right and wrong). * Defence Mechanisms- operates at an unconscious level and help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e. anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individuals. 8 types of defence mechanisms;
Displacement-redirecting repressed desires
Sublimation- transforming aggressive and sexual desires into a socially acceptable expression
Projection- Attributing your own acceptable impulses or characteristic to someone else
Denial-denying what happen
Repression-involves putting unacceptable thoughts and experience into the unconscious
Reaction formation- where a person goes beyond denial and behaves in the opposite way to which he or she thinks or feels
Rationalisation- involves supplying a logical or rational reason as opposed to the real reason. (helps to protect our sense of self-esteem)
Regression- Involves returning to a pervious stage of development. Regression is the giving up of mature problems solving methods in favour of child-like approaches to fixing problems to deal with stress. * Psychosexual stage- suggest that if you receive too much or too little at one of the stages you will become fixated at the stage and regress back to it in later life.
Evaluation

* Psychodynamic model has been criticised as it is unscientific in its analysis of human behaviour. * Psychodynamic model has been accused for being sexist as it proposes behaviour difference between men and women, especially women’s inferiority , are due to biology and not social and cultural factors, and so the difference are fixed and unalterable. * Deterministic- leaving little room for the idea of personal agency (i.e. free will) * Ethical issues- people are not to blame for their own abnormal behaviour, but may be partially responsible for the development of abnormal behaviour in their offspring.

Treatment * Psychoanalysis- for anxiety disorders
Dream analysis
Free association-involves reading a list of words (e.g. mother, childhood etc.) and the patient immediately responds with the first word that comes to mind. It is hoped that fragments of repressed memories will emerge in the course of free association.
Ink blots * Found by Freud, who believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight. * Psychoanalytic psychologist see psychological problems as rooted in the unconscious mind, typical causes include unresolved issues during development or repressed trauma.
Evaluation
* The case study of Anna O (repressed traumatic experience of her father’s death) and Little Hans (young boy who developed a phobia for horses) supports the theory of psychoanalysis. * Psychoanalysis may speed up the rate at which clients get better. * The nature of Psychoanalysis creates a power imbalance between therapist and client that could raise ethical issues. * Psychoanalysis – tends to be expensive and time-consuming * Psychoanalysis is generally considered more appropriate for treating neurotic disorders such as anxiety, but it is less suitable for patients with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. * Behaviourists’ criticism- behavioural approach to psychopathology think the abnormal behaviour is the disorder and so it is better to concentrate on changing the problem behaviour rather than spend time digging into distant childhood conflicts.

Behavioural Model * Behavioural model approach focuses on the ‘behaviour’ of an individual in order to explain psychological problems. * Assumptions of the model- abnormal behaviour is maladaptive and what was learnt can be unlearnt by the same principle. * Explains the emergence of specific, maladaptive, or dysfunctional behaviour such as phobia, anxiety and depression, through the process of classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning. * Classical conditioning- consist of three stages; Before conditioning- the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) produces an unconditioned response (UCR) in an organism. This stage also involves another stimulus which has no effect on a person and is called the neutral stimulus (NS). During conditioning- during this stage, a stimulus which produces no response (i.e. neutral) is associated the UCS at which point it now becomes CS.
After condition-the conditioned stimulus has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus to create a new conditioned response. * Watson and Rayner study on Little Albert supported the conditioning theory.

Before conditioning Loud noise Fear/crying (UCS) (UR) During conditioning Loud noise (UCS) + Fear/crying (UCR) White rat (NS) After conditioning White rat (CS) Fear/crying (CR) |

* Social learning theory-Behaviours are learned through imitation, that is, by observing others. Observational learning is particularly powerful for those who model the behaviour are seen to be rewarded. Some phobias such as fear of spiders are learnt by observing other people showing fear when they see spider. Mineka et al. study on monkey illustrates that fear is not genetically inherited as parents of the young monkeys who already feared snakes did not automatically acquire this fear themselves. However, when some monkeys did observer their parent showing fearful reaction they did acquire an intense and persistent fear. Evaluation * Behavioural model focuses on dealing with patients’ maladaptive behaviour derived or caused by their prior conditioning or reinforcement history. * Rejects role of genetic inheritance and the role of other psychological (cognitive and psychodynamic) factors in the development of psychological disorders. * Criticised for being reductionist- reduces all behaviour to simply learning by association, reinforcement, punishment and modelling. * Deterministic- complex human behaviour includes thinking, language, reasoning, problem solving, and feeling will probably need alternative explanations. * Much evidence for behaviourism comes from laboratory studies with animal. To suggest this is demeaning to some people, they point to human behaviour as being governed more by thinking i.e. cognitive and emotional factors. * Abnormal behaviour is determined by external environmental factors e.g. conditioning history and social and cultural factors, so individuals cannot be held responsible for their behaviour. Treatment * Classical conditioning includes systematic desensitization and aversion therapy. * Systematic desensitization- a behavioural therapy used to treat phobias and anxieties. After being trained in relaxation techniques, the phobic person is gradually exposed to situations that are more and more anxiety-provoking, until the fear response is placed by one of relaxation. For example: Dog causing Fear Needs to be changed to Dog causing Calmness and relaxation (pleasant feeling) * Aversion therapy- a behavioural treatment that aims to rid the individual of an undesirable habit (e.g. smoking) by pairing the habit with unpleasant (aversive) consequences. For example: Emetic (drug) Sick Emetic +smoke Sick Smoking Sick (aversive response) * Flooding is also another way to treat phobias. Flooding consist confronting the feared object or situation head on and not in small manageable steps. The idea is to flood or overwhelm the client with fear because after a time the fear will inevitably subside helping the client realise they won’t die and that really have nothing to fear. This procedure must only be carried out with the approval of the client. * Token economy-a behavioural technique that reinforces appropriate behaviour by awarding tokens that can be exchanged for goods or privileges. Evaluation * Research support for systematic desensitization but implosion and flooding are quicker. * Some research support but ethical concerns over aversion therapy. * Research support for token economy but risk of institutional bias and token learning. Cognitive Model * Cognitive model stress the role of cognitive problems such as irrational thinking in abnormal functioning. * Irrational thoughts are the causes for abnormality; if the thinking is changed the mental illness should be able to be cured. * Difference between the behavioural model and cognitive model is that behavioural model does not take the mental process into consideration. * Ellis (1962) called irrational thoughts ‘cognitive errors’. * Two processes that leads to irrational thinking; mustabation and awfulizing. * Mustabation is when a person stresses that they ‘must’ do something * Awfulizing is when a person over-generalises by saying e.g. “ I didn’t go university so I must be stupid”. * This theory can be challenged by questioning the assumption that people who don’t go university are stupid and give example of successful people that didn’t go university e.g. Alan Sugar. * Cognitive distortions are another example of faulty thoughts processes, and include over generalisation, magnifications and minimisation. * Generalisation- refers to learning to reach a conclusion about the world based on evidence from a single events * Magnification- the tendency to magnify small events, usually setbacks, so they appear more serious that they really are * Minimisation- the tendency to turn something significant. * Becks research supports this concept as he carried out a research which involved 48 adults with primarily mild or moderate intellectual disability. They participated in semi-structured interview, twice approximately 16 weeks apart, as did an additional 12 adults diagnosed with depression. Participants reported on depressed mood, the cognitive triad, as measured by views of the self, the world and the future, hopelessness and self-esteem. The finding showed that the cognitive triad inventory for children displayed adequate psychometric properties in this sample. * It correlated with depressed mood, and individuals diagnosed with depression have significantly higher scores on the cognitive triad inventory for children than those with no psychiatric diagnoses. * A negative cognitive did not predict depressed mood 4 months later, but the inverse relationship where depressed mood predicted a later negative cognitive triad approached statistical significance. * Certain childhood and adolescence experience (such as the loss of a parent or criticism from teacher) leads to the development of a cognitive triad consisting three interlocking negative belief. These concern the self, the world and the future, and cause people to have distorted and constricted outlook on life. The beliefs lead people to magnify bad, and minimise good experiences. The cognitive triad is maintained by several kinds of distorted and unreasonable interpretation of real events that contribute to depression. Treatment * Cognitive behavioural therapy is a therapeutic approach in psychology that is intended to help individuals learn to cope with anxiety inducing or stressful situation by rationally addressing faulty cognition and the ways in which it leads to inappropriate and self-defeating behaviour.