Deviation from Social Norms

Deviation from Social Norms

• Defines abnormal behavior as actions that differ from societal expectations and offend collective judgments of what is right.
• Norms are culturally specific.
• Over-reliance on social norms can lead to systematic abuse of human rights.
• Radical psychologists argue that modern mental disorder categories can be abuses of individuals' rights to be different, citing examples like drapetomania (black slaves running away) and nymphomania (women sexually attracted to working-class men), which are considered inapplicable as social norms have changed.
• Social norms change over time, leading to hindsight bias issues.
• Isolated instances of breaking social norms do not indicate deviant behavior, but persistent repetition may suggest psychological disturbance.
• Cultural relativism limits the deviation from social norms definition of abnormality.
• Social norms differ across cultures, meaning what is normal in one place can be abnormal in another.
• Homosexuality is illegal in about 75 countries and it is considered abnormal, but it is considered normal in the rest of the world.
• There is no global standard for defining what constitutes abnormal behavior.

Normal Distribution

• Data is numerical and continuous in frequency
• The X axis = countinous varibale
• The Y axis = frequency
• Symmetrical bell-shaped distribution
• Standard deviations when the data is normally distributed 68% of scores fall within one standard deviation of the mean and 95% of scores are within two standard deviations of the mean.
• Measures statistical infrequency by how far a score is from the mean.
• Mean, mode, and median overlap

Skewed Distribution:

• The distribution of scores is asymmetric
• A tail going right = shows a positive skew
• A tail going left = shows a negative skew
• Positive skew means more scores at the lower end of graph
• Negative skew means more scores at the higher end of graph
• Measures central tendency.
• Mode is the highest point.
• Median = positioned between mode and mean.
• Mean = skewed.
• If the mean is greater than the mode, the distribution shows a positively skewed outcome.
• If the mean is less than the mode, the distribution shows a negatively skewed outcome.

Statistical Infrequency

• When something is numerically rare or doesn't occur very often it’s labeled abnormal
• Statistical infrequency relies on up-to-date statistics.
• Abnormality is defined by a behavior that is uncommon or not frequently observed in a data set.
• It has real life applications e.g diagnosis of disorders
• Unusual characteristics can be positive.
• Not everyone unusual benefits from a label.
• The average IQ is set at 100.
• Scoring below 70 on an IQ test labels someone as intellectually disabled, while scoring 140+ allows them to join Mensa, which is viewed positively.
• IQ score of 145 will place people in the top 1% of IQ scores in the population.

Failure to Function Adequately

• When a person can no longer cope with the demands of everyday life.
• Inability to maintain basic standards of nutrition, hygiene, or hold down employment or maintain relationships.
• Rosenhan and Seligman (1989) proposed signs to determine when someone is no longer coping and can no longer:
  • Conforms to standard interpersonal rules.
  • Maintains personal space.
  • Maintains eye contact/respects personal space.
  • Experiences severe distress.
  • Demonstrates irrational or dangerous behavior to themselves or others.
• Affected by cultural relativism.
• It may be linked to other factors like the economy, and is context-dependent.
• Context is an important consideration, e.g., refusing to eat could indicate failure to function adequately, unless it's a prisoner on a hunger strike.

Deviation from Ideal Mental Health

• Mental health involves balancing psychological, physical, and social well-being without external influence, and effectively managing stress.
• Marie Jahoda (1958) suggested there are certain criteria to achieve good mental health, including:
  • Self-actualization.
  • Coping with stress.
  • Having a realistic view of the and seeing it as others do.
  • Having self-esteem and a lack of guilt.
  • Maintaining independence.
  • Successfully working, loving, and enjoying leisure.
  • Adapting to environments easily.
• Abnormal behavior deviates from these characteristics.
• Ideal mental health includes a positive self-view, personal growth, independence, accurate reality perception, stress integration, and environmental mastery.
• Cultural relativism applies as self-actualization is considered self-indulgent in cultures prioritizing family or community, and independence may be viewed negatively.
• This is because it may sets unrealistically high standards for mental health that few attain, leading to most people being classified as abnormal
• Criteria are subjective and not operationalized.

Explaining Phobias

• Phobias are characterized by excessive fear and anxiety triggered by an object, place, or situation, with the fear being disproportionate to the actual danger.
• Includes specific phobia, social anxiety, and agoraphobia.
• A phobia is an excessive feeling of panic or fear in response to an object, place, or situation, where the fear is excessive and the threat unresented.
• Includes acousticophobia (sound), social phobia (social situations), agoraphobia (leaving home), arithmophobia (numbers), cyclophobia (bikes), genophobia (sexual intercourse), necrophobia (dead body), arachnophobia (spiders) etc
• Behavioural characteristics include panic, avoidance or endurance.
• Emotional characteristics include anxiety.
• Selective attention, irrational beliefs, and cognitive distortions, are all linked to the cognitive characteristics of phobias.
• Phobias are best approached with the behaviourist approach
• Depression is best approached with the cognitive approach
• OCD is best approached with the biological approach
• the two process model (mower) identifies that phobias can be acquired through classical conditioning but are maintained through operant conditioning.
• Behaviours is operant conditioning tend to increase the frequency of a reinforcement whether its positive or negative.
• Avoiding a phobic stimulus reduces fear and anxiety, reinforcing the avoidance behavior and maintaining the phobia.
• Operant conditioning maintains Louies phobia of dogs as behaviour is reinforced or not punished.
• Operant conditioning provides successful strategies for treating specific phobias.
• Operant conditioning is supported by research evidence
• There is not enough consideration of cognition with behaviourist explanation of phobias as they may develop through irrational learning, not just general learning.
• Conditioning isn't the only way fears are acquired, some phobias have an evolutionary of biological preparedness
• Genetic vulnerability may be a factor as people experience the same incident, but not all develop phobias

Treating Phobias

• Includes panic, avoidance and endurance + anxiety + selective attention, irrational beliefs, and cognitive distortions.
• Phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and are maintained through operant conditioning.
• Systematic desensitisation is a behavioural therapy that gradually reduces phobic anxiety through classical conditioning by teaching sufferers to relax in the presence of a phobic stimulus to get cured.
• Counterconditioning creates a new response to the phobic stimulus.
• It is impossible to be afraid and relaxed at the same time due to reciprocal inhibition.
• Stage 1: anxiety hierarchy is put together by patient and therapist and list situations related to phobic stimulus that increase anxiety from low to high heights.
• Stage 2: relaxation training therapist tells intentions to relax as deeply as possible using relaxation techniques with alternatives such as drugs to achieve relaxation.
• Stage 3: gradual exposure is used where reciprocal inhibition takes place and work through the levels of the hierarchy.
• Flooding involves expsong the phobic patients to their phobic stimulis but wihtout a gradual buildup
  • It gives immediate exposure to a very frightening situation
  • It stops phobic responses very quickly

Evaluation of Systemic Desensitisation and Flooding

• Systemic desensitisation has research support for effectiveness
• A study found in treating spider phobia that people reported less fear after 3 months and 33 months ater the systematic desensitisation than the relaxation group.
• It’s suitable for a wide range of patients that have some phobic sufferes who might have learning disorders.
• It’s largely acceptable to patients that would prefer it due to is pleasantness.
• Flooding is cost effective and cures fear quicker as not many sessions are required.
• May benefit from cogntive therapies if patients have cogntive aspects.
• Treatments is traumatic as they are not unethucal due to it being consensual however they may be unwilling to see through the end.

DSM-5 Categories of Depression

• Major Depressive Disorder this is a sever but often short-term depression.
• Persistent Depressive Disorder is a long-term or recurring depression, as well as sustained major depression that used to be called dysthymia referring to it as a mild chronic state of depression.
• Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder this is commonly associated with childhood temper tantrums.
• Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder is a disruption to mood prior to and or during menstruation.
• Depression can cause reduced anxiety levels in individuals and sufferers of depression may experience reduced levels of energy, which results in individuals making them and feeling lethargic.
• Sufferers tend to withdraw from educational or social life.
• Disruption to sleep and eating behaviours depression is associated with changing sleep patterns as those experencing depression may experience reduced sleep particularly premature waking or increased need to sleep, similarly those experencing depression may want to have an increased decrease in appetite may increase or decrease.
• Aggression and self-harm as sufferes are often irratable and can be physically aggressive in some cases.
• Depression can manifest itself as lowered mood, angeer, and lowered self esteem.

Cognitive characteristics of Depression

• Includes a poor concentration.
• Attending to and dwelling on the negative.
• Absolutist thinking.
• Negative triad.
• Carla showcases faulty information processing, due to cognitive bias, expecting bad things to happen and exaggerating small problems, along with a negative self-schema.

Depression - Ellis

• A= Activating events such as stressers or challenges
• B= Beleifs of this stresser or challenge
• C = Consequence or the depressed mood
• irrational beliefs trigger the negative response not the activating event
• Its Application to theory has been used to devolop effective treatments for depression rebt which was devoloped from the abc model and cut.
• Research evidence which supports the congitive explanation of depression boury et al 2001 found patients with depression that where more likely to misinterpret intormation negatively

Characteristics of OCD

• Includes being, trichotillomania ,gathering possessions, and compulsive skin picking.
• The Cycle of OCD involves obsessive thought, anxiety, compulsive behaviour, temporary relief.
• Behavioural characteristics invovles compulsions.
• Emotionaly patients wil experience anxiety and distress.
• It will cause the patient to have obssesive thoughts with will lead to cognitive strategies.

OCD

• Faulty biological processes.
• It's inherited and linked to specific genes from parents.
• Abnormal levels of serotonin and dopamine .
• Two candidate genes are linked to OCD are the COMT and the SERT gene.
• COMT regulates dopamine function, with OCD linked to a variation causing high levels of dopamine.
• SERT affects serotonin transport and is linked to OCD when it causes lower levels of active serotonin.
• Twin studies show more concordance rates in twins with higher share of DNA.
• Dna profiling studies shows shows genes make people more vulnerable.
• Diathesis-stress model says that genes creates a likeleihood of mental disorder and must be combined with genes.
• twins share DNA and are twice to both have OCD when compaed to non identical twins
• A study from 2010 found that a significantly larger amount of twins were both likely to have had OCD compared to other twins.
• a signficant amount more people with traumatic life experiences suffered more severe OCD thn those without.