Preview

1
Preview

• Basic Issues of Mental Disorders
• Diagnostic issues
• Perspectives to study mental disorders
• The idea of multiple causation
• Sex differences in diagnosis

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Mental Disorders, Basic Concepts

• Mental Disorder controversy
• Symptom vs. Syndrome
• symptom individual characteristic of thought,
  feelings, behaviors
• syndrome constellation of symptoms an individual
  shows
• Syndrome
• clinically significant detriment
• internal source of distress
• involuntary manifestation

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Issues with Diagnosis

• reliability individual diagnosticians reach the
  same conclusions using the same system
• DSM-IV observable characteristics to maximize
  reliability
• validity the extent to which the systems
  categories are clinically meaningful
• Labeling people

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Perspectives on Mental Disorders

• Biological Perspective
• mental disorders as physical diseases
• brain abnormalities
• chemical imbalances
• birth difficulties
• heritability

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Perspectives on Mental Disorders

• Psychodynamic Perspective
• Sigmund Freud
• Unconscious conflicts and drives
• Early childhood trauma
• therapy helps person become aware of underlying
  conflicts

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Perspectives on Mental Disorders

• Cognitive Perspective
• conscious thoughts
• learned maladaptive thought patterns cause mental
  disorder
• Behavioral Perspective
• learned maladaptive patterns of behavior cause
  mental disorder

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Perspectives on Mental Disorders

• Sociocultural Perspective
• larger culture important to development of mental
  disorders
• supporting evidence from culture-bound syndromes
• Koro in Southeast Asia
• Anorexia and Bulimia in North America and Western
  Europe

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Multiple Causation

• Predisposing causes
• in place before onset
• make person susceptible
• inherited characteristics
• learned beliefs
• sociocultural beliefs

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Multiple Causation

• Precipitating causes
• immediate events that bring on the disorder
  (stress)
• loss (e.g., loved one, job)
• perceived threat
• when predisposition high, precipitating event may
  be small

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Multiple Causation

• Maintaining causes
• consequences of the disorder
• keep disorder going once it begins
• sometimes positive consequences (e.g., extra
  attention)
• often negative consequences (e.g., lack of
  friends)

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Sex Differences in Prevalence

• Large sex differences in prevalence
• Differences in Reporting
• men report less psychological distress than women
• dont admit distress?
• Physiological vs. psychological distress
• tradeoff?
• Men use more alcohol and drugs
• men seem to express anger more than distress

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Bias in Diagnosis

• diagnose men with male disorders and women with
  female disorders
• Ford Widiger (1989)
• antisocial male disorder
• histrionic female disorder

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Differences in Experiences

• Men women have different social experiences
• Women
• abuse from spouses
• abuse in childhood
• traditional roles
• As employment for genders becomes more similar,
  gender gap in some disorders decreases

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Summary

• Symptom vs. Syndrome in disorders
• Diagnostic issues of reliability validity
• Biological, Sociocultural, Behavioral,
  Psychodynamic, Cognitive perspectives
• Predisposing, Precipitating, Maintaining factors
• Why sex differences in diagnosis?