PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

• What is mental illness
• What causes it
• How many people suffer from mental disorders
• Does psychopathology include common experiences
  like being shy or feeling down

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Emil Nolde(1867-1956)
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COMMONLY USED CRITERIA FOR DEFINING ABNORMALITY

• Help seeking
• Irrationality/Dangerousness
• Deviance
• Emotional distress
• Significant impairment

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ROSENHAN STUDY AND CONTROVERSY

• One of the most famous research studies in the
  field of abnormal psychology.
• David Rosenhan and colleagues mistakenly
  diagnosed as mentally ill by doctors
• Pseudopatients arrive at hospital and falsely
  report having hallucinations
• All eight admitted to psychiatric ward
• All but 1 given diagnosis of schizophrenia.
• All acted normal after admission but were kept in
  hospital

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Rosenhan Study Cont.

• During hospital stay were appalled by
  dehumanizing experience of patients
• Patients were routinely ignored and treated
  dismissively by the hospital staff

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Rosenhan Continued

• Rosenahn hoped this study would make two major
  points.
• 1st-The label mental illness is misleading
  because it cannot be accurately identified even
  by professionals
• 2nd-The social environment in mental hospitals
  encouraged the very behaviors they were trying to
  eliminate. Being labeled as mentally ill
  contributed to the patients probmes and to
  impersonal treatment by the staff

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HELP SEEKING

• Some people who need help actually seek it out.
• This cannot be single criterion for defining
  psychopathology
• Most people with significant emotional disorders
  never seek treatment

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IRRATIONALITY/DANGEROUSNESS

• Mental illness equated with irrational
  dangerous or out-of-control behavior
• While some individuals with mental disorders are
  highly irrational or dangerous most are not.
• Self-destructive behaviors such as suicide or
  extreme recklessness are associated only with a
  few mental disorders.

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Irrational and Dangerous cont.

• Proper context-on a battlefield reckless
  out-of-control aggression can be considered
  appropriate or even heroic not abnormal!
• Rational controlled behavior can also be taken
  to an extreme. eg. Obsessive-compulsive
  personality disorder.
• Culturally relative-What is normal for one
  culture can be abnormal for another.
• In North Africa some people believe in possession
  by spirit causing shouting laughing head
  banging etc.

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DEVIANCE

• Behaviors or feelings that are extreme or
  statistically unusual.
• Weird bizarre strange
• Not all mental illness involves extreme
  behaviors.
• Deviance is not necessarily a sign of mental
  illness

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Mahatma Gandhioutlier among general population
yet a model of greatness not pathology
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Albert Einsteinanother outlier but model of
greatness
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EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

• Sadness or anxiety
• Emotional distress has 2 limitations as defining
  criterion for mental illness
• 1st-Some individuals report little or no
  distress. They may cause distress for the people
  around them because of their extreme and rigid
  personalities but dont often recognize their
  own problems and typically dont seek treatment.

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Emotional Distress Continued

• 2nd-Many forms of emotional distress are normal
  and not indicative of psychopathology.
• Consider the grieving process. It is normal to
  feel intense emotional distress after a death and
  unhealthy and even pathological not to grieve.

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SIGNIFICANT IMPAIRMENT

• Most forms of psychopathology involve some form
  of impairment such as decreased energy
  (depression) avoidance behaviors (anxiety) and
  pervasive problems in daily living
  (schizophrenia).
• Impairments sometimes are caused by physical
  injuries or diseases such as head injury or
  stroke.
• Some impairments are slight and not the central
  features of the condition
• Impairment in functioning turns out to be as
  hard to define as abnormality.

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV-TR)

• Psychiatric manual for diagnosing mental
  disorders.
• Has advantages and limitations.
• Contains many qualifications and undefined
  phrases such as clinically significant
• Focuses mostly on criteria of distress and
  impairment
• Defines mental illness as a harmful dysfunction
• Mental disorder is a broad concept that applies
  to a great many people.

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Practical Solutions

• Cognitive psychologists have argued that the
  definitions of many common everyday concepts
  lack precise boundaries or specifications and
  hence have coined the terms fuzzy or natural
  categories.

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