Summary AQA A/AS-Level Psychology Psychopathology Overview

Phobias
Psychopathology AO1
Characteristics
- Behavioural – panic, avoidance
- Emotional – anxiety and fear
Definitions of Abnrmality disproportional to threat
Statistical Infrequency - Cognitive – selective attention,
irrational beliefs
- Numerically rare behaviour
- IQ below 70 part of IDD diagnosis Behavioural Explanations

Deviation from Social Norms - Two-process model
- Acquisition by classical conditioning
- Social judgments of what is - Maintenance by operant conditioning
acceptable
- Culture specific e.g. homosexuality Treatment
- Antisocial personality disorder - Systematic desensitisation
Failure to Function Adequately - Flooding

- Iability to ocpe with demands of
everyday life
Depression
- Non-conformity to social rules,
personal distress, dangerous Characteristics
behaviour
- Behavioural – lethargy, disruption to
- Part of diagnosis of IDD
sleeping/eating, aggression
Deviation from Ideal Mental Health - Emotional – lowered mood and self-
esteem, anger
- Jahoda’s criteria for ideal mental
- Cognitive – attending to negative,
health:
irrational beliefs, suicidal thoughts
- No symptoms of distress
- Rational Beck’s Theory
- Self-actualisation
- Faulty information processing
- Cope with stress - Negative self-schema
- Realistic world view - Negative triad: self, world, future
- Good self esteem
- Independent of others Ellis’s ABC Model
- Activating event
- Beliefs
- Consequences
Treatment
- CBT – identify and challenge negative
thoughts from negative triad
- REBT – ABCDE (dispute and effect)
aims to identify and challenge
irrational beliefs by empirical
argument
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