Abnormal Psych Notes 1

Abnormal Psychology Note 1
Meeting 2 and 3
Behavior - ITS A RESPONSE OR ACTION MADE BY AN ORGANISM

PSYCHOLOGY IS THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF BEHAVIOR AND MENTAL PROCESSES
4 goals of PSychology
- Describe
- Predict
- Explain
- Control
RA 11029
Two types of behavior - overt (directly observable) and covert (emotions, feeling, and higher
intellectual activity)
Involuntary and Voluntary behavior - Control
Molecular and Molar behavior
Conscious and Unconscious - Awareness
Rational (logical) and Irrational thinking (illogic) - reasons
Simple (less neuron) and Complex behavior (more neuron) - number of neurons
Normal vs. Abnormal -
Behavior in Tagalog - Kilos at galaw
Trait - Katangian
Psychopathology
- The field concerned with the nature and development of abnormal behavior, thoughts,
and feeling
- The scientific study of mental disorders Psychopathology is a term that refers to either the
study of mental illness or mental distress or the manifestation of behaviors.
- Other terms for Abnormality/ mental illness or distress
What is Mental Disorder?
- A clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an
individual and that is associated with the present distress or disability or with significantly
increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom.
(Assignment difference between symptoms, sign, and syndrome)
Two types of Stress

Eustress - positive stress
Distress - alarming
Components of Abnormal Behavior

A. Statistical Deviance/rarity?
- One aspect of abnormal behavior is that it is infrequent, for example, episodes of
depression and mania
- An assertion that a person is normal implies that he or she does not deviate much
from the average in a particular trait or behavior pattern.
90-110 Normal/Average
<110 Gifted
>70 Exhibits Learning Disability
- Having great athletic ability is infrequent or statistically rare, but it does not count
as a parameter for abnormal psychology.
- Only certain infrequent behavior, such as experiencing hallucination or deep
depression fall into the domain of abnormal behavior.
B. Violation of Standard of Society
- Behavior is shaped by norms- cultural expectations about the right and wrong way
to do things.
- A behavior is most likely to be viewed abnormal when it violates the standard of
society and is statistically deviant or rare.
- Norms are widely held standards that people use consciously or intuitively to
make judgements about where behaviors are situated in such scales as good-
bad, right-wrong, justified-unjustified, acceptable and unacceptable.
C. Maladaptiveness
- Maladaptiveness behavior is often an indicator of abnormality.
- The person with depression may withdraw from friends and family and may be
unable to work for weeks or months.
- Consider the con artist and the contract killer, both of whom have antisocial
personality disorder. The first may be able to glibly talk people out of their life
savings, the second to take someone’s life in return for payment.
- Is this behavior maladaptive? Not for them because it is the way in which they
make their respective lives. We consider them abnormal, however, because their
behavior is maladaptive for and toward society.
Adjustment - Art of blending (still learning the change sin the environment)
Adaptiveness - Art of Mastery (you are already adjusted and know the changes in the
environment)
*Adjustment comes first before adaptiveness
D. Disability:
- Impairment in some important area of life (e.g work or personal relationship)
- Example: substance related disorders are defined in part by the social or
occupational disability (e.g serious arguments with one spouse or poor work
performance) created by substance abuse.
E. Suffering or Personal Distress:
- Behavior is abnormal if it creates great distress or torment in the person
experiencing it.
- If people suffer or experience psychological pain we are inclined to consider this
as indicative abnormality.
- If the person is content with his/her life, then she/he is of no concern to the mental
health field.
- Example: a student began feeling sad and lonely. Although he is still able to go to
classes and work, he finds himself feeling depressed much of the time and he is
concerned about what is happening to him.
F. Social Discomfort
- When someone violates a social rule, those around him or her may experience a
sense of discomfort or unease.
G. Irrationality and Unpredictability
- If person sitting next to you suddenly began to scream and yell obscenities at
nothing, you would probably regard that behavior as abnormal
- The disordered speech and the disorganized behavior of patients with
schizophrenia are often irrational.
- Perhaps the most important factor, however, is our evaluation of whether the
person can control his or her behavior.
Dangerousness
- It seems quite reasonable to think that someone who is a danger to him- or herself or to
another person must be psychologically abnormal.
- Indeed , therapists are required to hospitalize suicidal clients or contact the police (as well
as the person who is the target of the threat) if they have a client who makes an explicit
threat to harm another person.
No one definition is the correct or the best definition. To a certain extent each one captures a
different aspect of the meaning of abnormality. WHen we talk about abnormality, or when we
study, or treat those suffering from it, we inevitably invoke one or more of these definitions either
explicitly or implicitly.
Meeting#3
● When you diagnose, you try to identify a certain disease, illness, or you want to
see if there’s a problem.
● We are after the condition; it’s the illness, not the person.
● If you diagnose, you will see possible causes/treatments to address a particular
symptom.
● Cornerstone of diagnosis: You should be using reliable and valid scales.
● Reliability speaks for consistency, accurateness.
● Dementia praecox, mania – common disorder before.
➔ Dementia praecox – (meaning a "premature dementia" or "precocious
madness") is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated
a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive
disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood.
➔ Mania – excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity,
disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood specifically: the manic
phase of bipolar disorder
● Syndromes – group of symptoms
● Note: If it is not on DSM, it is not a disorder.
● DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
● DSM-5 no longer uses axiality (axis I, axis II, etc.)
● In DSM-5 diagnosis, we also use physical condition (high blood pressure) not just
mental conditions.
● ICD – International Classification of Diseases
● DSM-5 and ICD are our nosology
● Nosology - the branch of medical science dealing with the classification of
diseases
● Treatment is dealing with the disease, illness, and problem
● We can do a diagnosis; we can treat provided that we are licensed.
● Aaron Beck developed cognitive therapy in the early 1960s as a psychiatrist at
the University of Pennsylvania. He had previously studied and practiced
psychoanalysis. A researcher and scientist at heart, Beck designed and carried
out a number of experiments to test psychoanalytic concepts of depression.
● Philippine François Pinel — Liberator of the insane, father of psychiatry
● Benjamin Rush – father of American psychiatry
● Clifford Whittingham Beers- Advocate of the insane; founder of the Connecticut
Society for Mental Hygiene
● If it’s biomedical, we need a doctor.
● Psychodynamic – used for PSTD, form of depth psychology
● EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy
A sign is an observable phenomenon while symptoms are a manifestation of a disease or a

subjective experience , syndrome refers to a group of symptoms while disease refers to the
established condition.

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Abnormal Psychology Note 1

Behavior - ITS A RESPONSE OR ACTION MADE BY AN ORGANISM

Two types of Stress

Components of Abnormal Behavior

A sign is an observable phenomenon while symptoms are a manifestation of a disease or a

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