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• Psychological disorders involve psychological dysfunction, distress or impairment, and atypical responses.
• Abnormal psychology studies the nature, causes, and treatment of mental disorders.
• Normal behavior exhibits correct adaptation and aligns with general majority patterns.
• Abnormality is behavior inconsistent with norms, causing distress or functional interference.
• Psychological dysfunction includes breakdowns in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral areas.
• Distress involves intense feelings that impair one's ability to function normally.
• Dysfunction interferes with daily activities and life management.
• Danger refers to actions that are potentially harmful to oneself or others.
• A widely accepted definition includes unexpected cultural dysfunctions linked to distress, impaired function, or increased risks.

Factors Increasing Psychological Disorder

• Crisis situations, especially difficult life circumstances
• Experiencing any form of abuse, whether emotional or verbal
• Living in poverty, characterized by a scarcity of resources

Four Elements of Psychological Disorder

• Deviance: displaying different, extreme, emotions, thoughts or behaviors, like hallucinations or delusions, seen in schizophrenia.
• Distress: experiencing negative feelings such as sadness, anxiety, or fear
• Dysfunction: encountering difficulty in performing tasks or roles in life
• Danger: posing risk of harm to self or others

Historical Conceptions

• In the past, abnormal behavior was attributed to demons and witches
• Exorcism was used to remove evil spirits
• The view of stress and melancholy saw insanity as a natural phenomenon from mental or emotional stress.

Supernatural Tradition

• Treatments for possession involved scaring evil spirits out
• Large-scale outbreaks of unusual behavior are termed mass hysteria.
• The moon and stars were believed to influence psychological functioning.

Biological Tradition

• Hippocrates and Galen proposed that disorders arise from imbalances in bodily fluids, or humors
• Syphilis was found to cause delusions and bizarre behavior when it entered the brain
• John P. Grey believed insanity had physical roots

Psychological Tradition

• Providing social and interpersonal contact is considered moral therapy.
• Asylum reform aimed to improve mental healthcare, led by Dorothea Dix's Mental Hygiene Movement.

Mental Health Professionals

• Clinical and counseling psychologists provide therapy and assessment
• Psychiatrists can prescribe medication and provide therapy
• Psychiatric social workers assist individuals and families with mental health issues
• Psychiatric nurses provide specialized care for patients with mental disorders

The Scientist-Practitioner Approach

• Mental health professionals should stay updated on scientific developments, evaluate their methods, and conduct research.

Clinical Description

• Represents the unique combination of behaviors, thoughts, feelings that make up a disorder

Prevalence and Incidence

• Prevalence indicates how many people have a disorder
• Incidence reflects how many new cases occur

Course of Disorders

• Chronic disorders persist for a long time or a lifetime

• Episodic disorders occur in episodes with symptom-free periods

• Time-limited disorders resolve on their own in a short time

• Onset: refers to how a disorder appears (acute or insidious).

• Acute Onset: symptoms appear suddenly and intensely

• Insidious Onset: symptoms emerge gradually over time

• Prognosis: is the anticipated course of a disorder

Developmental Psychopathology

• Focuses on how abnormal behavior evolves over time.

Etiology

• Studies the origins of disorders, including biological, psychological, and social factors.

Treatment

• Is important for understanding psychological disorders

Integrative Approach to Psychopathology

• One-Dimensional: attributes a disorder to a single cause
• Multidimensional: considers multiple contributing factors

Biological Influences

• Diathesis-stress model: involves the interaction of genetics and environment to produce a disorder
• Gene-environment correlation model: a genetic predisposition can increase the likelihood of encountering environmental risk factors for a disorder

Biological Cognitive Science

• Learned Helplessness: feeling of a lack of control
• Learned Optimism: maintaining a positive attitude despite stress, which improves psychological and physical well-being
• Conditioning & Cognitive Processes: include classical (Pavlov) and operant conditioning (Skinner).

Social Learning

• Learning can occur through observation, without direct experience

Prepared Learning

• Humans have evolved to readily learn about stimuli that pose a survival threat
• Passed down knowledge or fear: includes dangers like snakes and safe things, like some flowers.

Cognitive Science and the Unconscious

• The ability to process information and react without conscious awareness.

Emotional Influences

• Emotion: a short-lived physiological response to a stimulus

• Fight-or-flight response: a survival mechanism activated in dangerous situations

• Fear Response: Physiological responses to perceived danger

• Emotional Phenomena includes fear as a subjective feeling and mood as a persistent emotional state

• Affect, encompassing the valence dimensions. (pleasant/unpleasant)

• Action Tendency - the tendency to behave a certain way

3 Components of Emotion

• Behavior
• Physiology
• Cognition
• The suppression increases sympathetic nervous system activity

Cultural Factors

• Voodoo deaths and black magic are cultural influences
• Gender influences the likelihood of phobias and is tied to gender roles

Social Effects on Health

• Social relationships correlate with a longer life

Social Stigma

• Is weakness and reduces social support and recovery chances

Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis

• Clinical assessment involves systematic evaluation
• Diagnosis involves determining if criteria are met

Key Assessment Components

• Reliability: consistency
• Validity: accuracy
• Standardization: applicability

Clinical Interview

• Gathers past and current behavior
• Identifies the start of the problem and events

Mental Status Exam (MSE)

• Done in a systematic way to observe behavior
• Can identify present illness or problem
• Systematic observation of behavior, identifying illnesses or problems

5 Categories of MSE

• Appearance and Behavior
• Thought Process
• Mood and Affect
• Intellectual Functioning
• Sensorium
• Semi structured interviews use prepared and tested questions.
• Physical examinations test medical conditions with psych problems
• Behavioral assessment directly observes feelings and thoughts.

The ABC's of Observation

• A - Antecedent
• B - Behavior
• C - Consequence
• Informal Observation - relies on the observer's interpretation
• Formal observation involves identifying specific behaviors

Self-Monitoring

• Observing and identifying behavior patterns

Checklist and Behavior Rating Scales

• Provides formal and structured observations

Psychological Testing

• Uses tools to determine responses tied to specific disorders

Projective Technique

• The presentation of ambiguous stimuli reflects unconsciousness

Personality Inventories

• Face vs. construct validity
• Empirically-based
• Minimally ambiguous stimuli
• Minimal inference
• Neuropsychological testing measures abilities like receptive and expressive language and attention.
• Diagnosing Psychological Disorders
• Idiographic - determination of individual, unique features attributes
• Nomothetic - determination of general classes and common attributes

Diagnostic Classification

• Taxonomy: classifying for scientific purposes.
• Nosology: the taxonomic system to phenomena
• Nomenclature : labels of the disorders of the nosology
• Categorical Approach
• Classical Categorical Approach: unique differences and unique causes
• Dimensional Approach: rates symptoms on dimensions
• Prototypical Approach: combines approaches
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Practice Examples

• Maria should recover or deteriorate which is an example of prognosis
• Number of examples of bulimia is an example of incidence
• Elizabeth's campus visit for anxiety is an example of the presenting problem
• Biological - etiological
• Pattern and disorders - course
• How many people in the populations suffer from obsessive-compulsive behavior is an assessment of prevalence

Onsite Quiz

• Psychological dysfunction is abnormal behavior
• You are on a date and experience severe fear - Psychological Dysfunction
• Describing the patient with unique behaviors - Clinical Description
• The anticipated course of a disorder - prognosis
• The four Ds of abnormality are deviance, distress, dysfunction, danger
• Hippocrates believed that abnormal behavior was caused by imbalance in bodily fluids
• Detecting patterns of functioning is the role of a clinical practioner