Test Bank For Abnormal Psychology 7th edition by Oltmanns and Emery

Chapter 1 Examples and Definitions of Abnormal Behavior

Chapter-at-a-GlanceDETAILED INSTRUCTOR OUTLINE RESOURCES

An overview of abnormal psychology

1. Psychopathology (pathology of the mind): the symptoms and signs of mental disorders including such phenomena as depressed mood, panic attacks, and bizarre beliefs
2. Abnormal psychology is defined as the application of psychological science to the study of mental disorders
3. Mental disorders are defined by a set of features (symptoms)
4. Terms: psychosis, delusion, insanity, nervous breakdown, syndrome

Defining abnormal behavior

1. Personal distress—subjective experience of suffering; misses cases in which individual does not identify own thoughts/behaviors as problematic
2. Statistical norms—how common or rare it is in the general population
   1. By definition people with usually high levels of anxiety or depression would beconsidered to be abnormal because their experience deviates from the expected norms
   2. Another weakness of the statistical approach is that it does not distinguish between deviations that are harmful and those that are not
3. Maladaptiveness—Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction concept
   1. The condition results from inability of some internal mechanism on the part of the person
   2. The condition causes harm to the person
   3. Mental illness is defined as harmful dysfunction in terms of a product of disruptions of thought, feeling, communication, perception, and motivation.
   4. The harmful dysfunction view of mental disorder recognizes that every type of dysfunction does not lead to a disorder; only dysfunction that results in significant harm to the person are considered to be disorders.
4. DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000) defines mental disorders associated with: (any or all)
   1. Present distress
   2. Disability (impairment in one or more areas of functioning)2Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. Significant risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom

5. Mental health means more than the absence of mental illness
   1. Healthy people can be described as ‘flourishing’
   2. Flourishing people have more positive emotions, are calm and peaceful, have positive attitudes, and possess a sense of meaning and purpose
6. Culture and Diagnostic Practice: DSM-IV-TR defines pathologies in terms of our particular culture and cultural values1. Culture is defined in terms of the values, beliefs, and practices that are shared by a specific community or group of people2. Cultural values influence the opinions regarding normal and abnormal behavior

III. Epidemiology

1. The scientific study of the frequency and distribution of disorders within a population
2. Incidence—number of new cases of a disorder that appear in a population during a specific period of time
3. Prevalence—total number of active cases that are present in a population during a specific period of time (lifetime prevalence—proportion of people in a given population affected by the disorder at some point during their lives)
4. Gender differences are found in many but not all mental disorders; most prominent differences include: anxiety disorders and depression (more common in women), and substance abuse and antisocial personality disorder (more common in men)
5. Comorbidity—the presence of more than one condition at one time in an individual
6. Global Burden of Disease and Injury (Sponsored by World Health Organization WHO)—assessed impact of conditions; mental disorders are responsible for 1% of death but 47% of disability in the U.S. and developed nations
7. Cross-Cultural Comparisons: 90% percent of individuals with Bulimia nervosa are women, usually university students, in the Western society
8. Draguns and Tanaka-Matsumi (2003) reported that mental disorders are shaped by culture, no mental disorder is caused entirely due to cultural factors, psychotic disorders are less influenced by culture, and that the symptoms of disorders vary across cultures

IV. Mental health professionsA. Psychiatrists are physicians (medical doctors) who specialize in treating mental disorders3Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.