Chapter 1 - Required assignment due every week. PDF

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TRA NGUYEN (PSYC 3322)

1.

Discuss some of the difficulties of defining a person’s behavior as abnormal.

Judgments on abnormal behavior are affected by numerous factors such as social norms, bias and fundamental attribution errors, the ambiguity of the breakpoint between normal/abnormal. 2.

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Describe the different ways of defining abnormality from the perspectives of deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger. Deviance: Violation of social norms - Makes others uncomfortable or causes problems. Distress: A person’s behavior may be classified as disordered if it causes him or her great distress (emotional pain and suffering). Dysfunction: Failure of internal mechanisms in the mind to function properly – Behavioral, psychological, and/or biological systems are impaired. Danger: Individuals whose behavior is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk. Describe the ways that ancient peoples, Greeks, Romans, and persons in the age of the Renaissance viewed and treated abnormal behavior. Ancient peoples in the early societies viewed abnormality as the possession by evil beings or spirits and the treatment was often exorcism. In the years from roughly 500 B.C. to 500 A.D, when the Greek and Roman civilizations thrived, philosophers and physicians often offered different explanations and treatments for abnormal behaviors. Hippocrates - who often called the father of modern medicine, taught that mental disturbances had natural (not supernatural) causes (problems with the brain). He saw abnormal behavior as a disease arising from internal physical problems. According to him, normal brain functioning depended on balance of four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. An excess of yellow bile, for example, caused mania, a state of frenzied activity; an excess of black bile was the source of melancholia, a condition marked by unshakable sadness. So Hipocrates believed that the excess of black bile underlying melancholia could be reduced by a quiet life, a diet of vegetables, temperance, exercise, celibacy and even bleeding. During the period of Renaissance, the care of people with mental disorders continued to improve. There was a type of institution that became popular in this period called asylum. It provided care for people with mental disorders and then most became virtual prisons. Describe moral treatment.

A 19th century approach of treating people with mental dysfunction that emphasized moral guidance and humane respectful treatment. There were small, private funded, humanitarian mental hospitals where patients can engaged in purposeful, calming activities (e.g, gardening) and talked with attendants.

TRA NGUYEN (PSYC 3322)

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Describe the somatogenic and psychogenic perspectives of the early 1900s. Somatogenic perspective: The view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes. Psychogenic perspective: The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological. Describe the current treatment of severely disturbed individuals. Contrast this to the current treatment of less severely disturbed individuals.

In short, outpatient care has now become the primary mode of treatment for people with severe psychological disturbances as well as for those with more moderate problems. Today when severely disturbed people do need institutionalization, they are usually given short-term hospitalization. Ideally, they are then given outpatient psychotherapy and medication in community programs and residences. 7.

Discuss the impact of deinstitutionalization on the care and treatment of the severely mentally ill.

Deinstitutionalization is the practice begun in the 1960s, of releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals. On any given day in 1955, close to 600,000 people were confined in public mental institutions across the United States. Today the daily patient population in the same kinds of hospitals is less than 40,000 (Althouse, 2010). 8.

Discuss the development and foci of (a) prevention programs and (b) positive psychology. How are they related to the community mental health approach? a) Prevention programs are interventions aimed at deterring mental disorders before they can develop. Although the community mental health approach has often failed to address the needs of people with severe disorders, it has given rise to an important principle of mental health care. Rather than wait for psychological disorders to occur, many of today’s community programs try to correct the social conditions that underlie psychological problems and to help individuals who are at risk for developing emotional problems. b) Positive psychology is the study and enhancement of positive feelings such as optimism and happiness, positive traits like hard work and wisdom, positive abilities such as social skills and other talents, and group-directed virtues, including altruism and tolerance.

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What is multicultural psychology? How does it enhance the clinical practice?

Multicultural psychology is the field of psychology that examines the impact of culture, race, ethnicity, gender and similar factors on our behaviors and thoughts and focuses on how such factors may influence the origin, nature, and treatment of abnormal behavior.

TRA NGUYEN (PSYC 3322)

10. Describe the influence of managed care programs on the treatment of psychological abnormality. What is parity? Managed care program is a system of health care coverage in which the insurance company largely controls the nature, scope, and cost of medical or psychological services. At least 75% of all privately insured people in the U.S are currently enrolled in managed care programs. In 2011, a federal parity law went into effect in the U.S – a law that directs insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental and medical problems. 11. Compare and contrast the current dominant theories in abnormal psychology. Before the 1950s, the psychoanalytic perspective, with its emphasis on unconscious psychological problems as the cause of abnormal behavior, was dominant. Then the discovery of effective psychotropic drugs inspired new respect for the somatogenic, or biological, view. There are other influential perspectives that have emerged since the 1950s are the behavioral, cognitive, humanistic-existential, and sociocultural schools of thought. At present no single viewpoint dominates the clinical field as the psychoanalytic perspective once did. In fact, the perspectives often conflict and compete with one another, yet in some instances they complement each other and together provide more complete explanations and treatments for psychological disorders. 12. Describe the role of clinical researchers in the field of abnormal psychology. Researchers use the scientific method to uncover nomothetic principles of abnormal psychological functioning. They attempt to identify and examine relationships between variables and depend primarily on three methods of investigation: the case study, the correlational method, and the experimental method. 13. Describe the case study, including its uses and limitations (strengths and weaknesses). A case study is a detailed account of a person’s life and psychological problems. It can serve as a source of ideas about behavior, provide support for theories, challenge theories, clarify new treatment techniques, or offer an opportunity to study an unusual problem. Yet case studies may be reported by biased observers and rely on subjective evidence. In addition, they tend to have low internal validity and low external validity. 14. Describe the correlational method. What is a positive versus a negative versus a null correlation? What are the uses and limitations of correlational research? A correlational method is a research procedure used to determine how much events or characteristics vary along with each other. This method allows researchers to draw broad conclusions about abnormality in the population at large. A correlation may have a positive or negative direction and may be high or low in magnitude. It can be calculated numerically and is expressed by the correlation coefficient (r). Researchers

TRA NGUYEN (PSYC 3322)

perform a statistical analysis to determine whether the correlation found in a study is truly characteristic of the larger population or due to chance. Correlational studies generally have high external validity but lack internal validity. Two widely used forms of the correlation method are epidemiological studies and longitudinal studies. 15. Describe the experiment. What are the uses and limitations of experimental research? Describe the reasons that experimenters use control groups, random assignment, and blind design. In experiments, researchers manipulate suspected causes to see whether expected effects will result. The variable that is manipulated is called the independent variable, and the variable that is expected to change as a result is called the dependent variable. Confounds are variables other than the independent variable that are also acting on the dependent variable. To minimize their possible influence, experimenters use control groups, random assignment, and blind designs. The findings of experiments, like those of correlational studies, must be analyzed statistically. Experimenters use random assignment to reduce the effects of preexisting differences. Besides, they use control groups and blind design to avoid the bias. 16. Describe the following alternative experimental designs: quasi-experimental design; natural experiments; analogue experiments; single-subject experiments.  

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Quasi-experimental design: It is often applied research and also called the mixed design. The program evaluation seeks to determine effectiveness of changes made by agencies or institutions. Natural experiments: Nature itself manipulates the independent variable, and the experimenter observes the effects. Natural experiments must be used for studying the psychological effects of unusual and unpredictable events, such as floods, earthquakes, plane crashes, and fires. Because the participants in these studies are selected by an accident of fate rather than by the investigators’ design, natural experiments are actually a kind of quasi-experiment. Analogue experiments: There is one way in which investigators can manipulate independent variables relatively freely while avoiding many of the ethical and practical limitations of clinical research. They can induce laboratory participants to behave in ways that seem to resemble real life abnormal behavior and then conduct experiments on the participants in the hope of shedding light on the reallife abnormality. Single-subject experiments: They rely first on baseline data - information gathered prior to any manipulations. These data set a standard with which later changes may be compared. The experimenter next introduces the independent variable and again observes the participant’s behavior. Any changes in behavior are attributed to the effects of the independent variable....