01 - Intro to Abnormal Psychology

What is Abnormality??

General questions

Abnormal compared to what?

Who gets to decide what is normal and what is not?

Definition

Not that simple…

Can be defined in four main ways:

i) Statistical Definition

ii) Social Norm Deviance

iii) Subjective Discomfort

iv) Inability to function normally

Statistical definition

Frequently occurring behaviour = normal – rare behaviour = abnormal

But what about: intelligence, happiness…universality?

Social Norm Deviance

Something that goes against the norms/standards of the society of the individual

Implications:multicultural societies

even within one culture, the situational context can make a difference in how behaviour is labeled. E.g. man complains of spies and phone tappings…

Witness protection!

Subjective Discomfort

When person experiences emotional distress or emotional pain while engaging in a particular behaviour.

E.g. agoraphobia

BUT… does not apply to all abnormal behaviours … e.g. Psychopathic serial killers.

Inability to function normally

Behaviour that does not allow a person to fit into society or function normally.

Maladaptive – the person finds it hard to adapt to the demands of day to day living.

Maladaptive behaviour includes behaviour that may initially help a person cope but has harmful effects.

Final definition…

Any pattern of behaviour that causes people significant distress, causes them to harm themselves or others, or harms their ability to function in daily life.

Clinical psychologists must consider several different criteria in determining whether or not a behaviour is abnormal (at least two must be met to form a diagnosis of abnormality)

Criteria

1. Is the behaviour unusual, such as experiencing severe panic when faced with a stranger or being severely depressed in the absence of any stressful life situations?

2. Does the behaviour go against social norms?

3. Does the behaviour cause the person significant subjective discomfort?

4. Is the behaviour maladaptive?

5. Does the behaviour cause the person to be dangerous to self or others?

Historical Models of Behaviour

Supernatural

Biological

Psychiatry

Supernatural

3000BCE – evidence of ancient surgical techniques in human skulls. Holes cut while person was still alive and showed healing – survived!

Suggested that it was done to release demons possessing the victim

Technique = trepanning – still done today to relieve pressure of fluids on the brain.

Treatments

Exorcism: various religious rituals to rid the victim of evil spirits.

Torture to make the bodies uninhabitable

Shaving the pattern of a cross in the hair of the victim’s head

Securing sufferers to a wall near the front of a church for mass

Hanging people over a pit full of snakes to scare the evil spirits out of the bodies

Shock treatments (ice cold water dunkings)

Supernatural today

The supernatural tradition in psychopathology still exists today, although it is restricted to small religious sects and in some developing countries.

Biological

Hippocrates (460-377BC) – father of modern medicine.

Believed that psychological disorders might be caused by brain pathology or head trauma and could be influenced by heredity.

Considered brain as seat of wisdom, consciousness, intelligence and emotion. Logically concluded disorders involved with these functions are located in the brain.

Galen (129-198AD)

Roman physician adopted and further develop Hippocrates’ ideas

Humoral Theory of disorders

Galen’s Theory

The belief that normal brain functioning was related to four bodily fluids or humors: Blood/Sanguine (came from the heart – link to

cheerful/optimistic) Black bile/Melancholer (from the spleen – link to depression) Yellow bile/Choler (from the liver – link to hot temper) Phlegm (from the brain – like to apathy)

Physicians believed that disease resulted from too much or too little of one of the humors; e.g. >black bile = melancholia (depression)

Theory perhaps the first to associate psychological disorders with chemical imbalance.

Treatments

Excesses of one or more humors were treated by regulating the environment to increase or decrease heat, dryness, moisture, or cold, depending on which humor was out of balance as each humor was related to either heat, dryness, moisture or cold.

Bleeding/Bloodletting: a carefully measured amount of blood removed from the body, often with leeches.

Induce vomiting

Psychiatry

John Grey - 1850s: influential American psychiatrist

Believed insanity was always due to physical causes, therefore mentally ill patients should be treated as physically ill.

Hospital conditions grew.

Took almost 140 years before community mental health movement succeeded in ‘deinstitutionalization’

Treatment

1920s-now: electric shock, brain surgery, effects of drugs (e.g. insulin shock therapy)