summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
,summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
, summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
Chapter 1 Abnormal Psychology: Past and Present
Abnormal psychology: The scientific study of abnormal behavior in an effort to describe, predict, explain, and
change abnormal patterns of functioning.
Four D’s of abnormal psychology:
- Deviance (different, extreme, unusual, perhaps even bizarre)
* Norms: A society’s stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.
- Behavior that breaks legal norms is considered to be criminal.
- Behavior, thoughts and emotions that break norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal.
* Culture: A people’s common history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts.
* Judgments of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms.
- Distress (unpleasant and upsetting to the person)
* According to many clinical theorists, behavior, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress
before they can be labeled abnormal. This is not necessarily true.
- Dysfunction (interfering with the person’s ability to conduct daily activities in a constructive way)
- Danger (to oneself or others)
* Most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no
immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else.
(While we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant,
distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague).
What is treatment?
Treatment, or therapy is a procedure to help change abnormal behavior into more normal behavior.
* All forms of therapy have three key features (Jerome Frank):
1. A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer.
2. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by the sufferer and his or her
social group.
3. A series of contacts between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer often tries
to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, attitudes, and behavior.
* Despite differences in what defines therapy, many clinicians do agree that large numbers of people
need therapy of one kind or another.
View on abnormality and treatment in the past
* Ancient views and treatments
- People in prehistoric societies viewed the human body and mind as a battleground between
external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behavior was typically interpreted as a victory by evil
spirits, and the cure for such behavior was to force the demons from a victim’s body.
- Trephination: An ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used (trephine) to
cut away a circular section of the skull, perhaps to treat abnormal behavior.
- The treatment for abnormality was often exorcism. Performed by a shaman.
* Greek and Roman views and treatments
- Hippocrates taught that illnesses had natural causes (internal physical problems).
- Humors: According to the Greeks and Romans, bodily chemicals that influence mental and
physical functioning. Yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm.
* Europe in the Middle Ages: demonology returns
- Mass madness: large numbers of people apparently shared absurd false beliefs and imagined
sights or sounds.
, summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
- Tarantism/Saint Vitus’ dance: groups of people would suddenly start to jump, dance, and go
into convulsions (believed they were bitten by a taranturla).
- Lycanthropy: people thought they were possessed by wolves or other animals.
- Exorcisms performed by clergymen.
- Medical views of abnormality gained favor, and many people with psychological
disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals.
* The renaissance and the rise of asylums
- Asylum: A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for
persons with mental disorders. Most became virtual prisons.
* The nineteenth century: reform and moral treatment
- Moral treatment: A nineteenth-century approach to treating people with mental dysfunction
that emphasized moral guidance and humane and respectful treatment.
- State hospitals: State-run public mental institutions in the United States.
* The early twentieth century: the somatogenic and psychogenic perspectives
- Somatogenic perspective: The view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes.
- Psychogenic perspective: The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological.
- Psychoanalysis: Either the theory or the treatment of abnormal mental functioning that
emphasizes unconscious psychological forces as the cause of psychopathology.
Current trends
* How are people with severe disturbances cared for?
- Psychotropic medications: Drugs that mainly affect the brain and reduce man symptoms of
mental dysfunctioning.
- Deinstitutionalization: The practice, begun in the 1960s, of releasing hundreds of thousands
of patients from public mental hospitals.
- 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.
* How are people with less severe disturbances treated?
Outpatient care.
* A growing emphasis on preventing disorders and promoting mental health.
- Prevention: Interventions aimed at deterring disorders before they develop.
- Positive psychology: The study and enhancement of positive feelings, traits, and abilities.
* Multicultural psychology:
- The field that examines the impact of culture, race, gender, and similar factors on our behaviors and
focuses on how such factors may influence abnormal behavior.
* The growing influence of insurance coverage.
- Managed care program: A system of health care coverage in which the insurance company
largely controls the nature, scope, and cost of service.
- A key problem with insurance coverage (both managed care and other kinds of insurance
programs) is that reimbursements for mental disorders tend to be lower than those for medical
disorders.
What do clinical researches do?
Scientific method: The process of systematically gathering and evaluating information through careful
observations to gain an understanding of a phenomenon.
* The case study:
- Case study: A detailed account of a person’s life and psychological problems.
- How are case studies helpful?
- They can be a source of new ideas about behavior and ‘open the way for discoveries’.
- They can show the value of new therapeutic techniques or unique applications of
existing techniques.
,summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
, summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
Chapter 1 Abnormal Psychology: Past and Present
Abnormal psychology: The scientific study of abnormal behavior in an effort to describe, predict, explain, and
change abnormal patterns of functioning.
Four D’s of abnormal psychology:
- Deviance (different, extreme, unusual, perhaps even bizarre)
* Norms: A society’s stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.
- Behavior that breaks legal norms is considered to be criminal.
- Behavior, thoughts and emotions that break norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal.
* Culture: A people’s common history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts.
* Judgments of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms.
- Distress (unpleasant and upsetting to the person)
* According to many clinical theorists, behavior, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress
before they can be labeled abnormal. This is not necessarily true.
- Dysfunction (interfering with the person’s ability to conduct daily activities in a constructive way)
- Danger (to oneself or others)
* Most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no
immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else.
(While we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant,
distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague).
What is treatment?
Treatment, or therapy is a procedure to help change abnormal behavior into more normal behavior.
* All forms of therapy have three key features (Jerome Frank):
1. A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer.
2. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by the sufferer and his or her
social group.
3. A series of contacts between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer often tries
to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, attitudes, and behavior.
* Despite differences in what defines therapy, many clinicians do agree that large numbers of people
need therapy of one kind or another.
View on abnormality and treatment in the past
* Ancient views and treatments
- People in prehistoric societies viewed the human body and mind as a battleground between
external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behavior was typically interpreted as a victory by evil
spirits, and the cure for such behavior was to force the demons from a victim’s body.
- Trephination: An ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used (trephine) to
cut away a circular section of the skull, perhaps to treat abnormal behavior.
- The treatment for abnormality was often exorcism. Performed by a shaman.
* Greek and Roman views and treatments
- Hippocrates taught that illnesses had natural causes (internal physical problems).
- Humors: According to the Greeks and Romans, bodily chemicals that influence mental and
physical functioning. Yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm.
* Europe in the Middle Ages: demonology returns
- Mass madness: large numbers of people apparently shared absurd false beliefs and imagined
sights or sounds.
, summary fundamentals of psychology 10th edition comer 1319441327 test bank
- Tarantism/Saint Vitus’ dance: groups of people would suddenly start to jump, dance, and go
into convulsions (believed they were bitten by a taranturla).
- Lycanthropy: people thought they were possessed by wolves or other animals.
- Exorcisms performed by clergymen.
- Medical views of abnormality gained favor, and many people with psychological
disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals.
* The renaissance and the rise of asylums
- Asylum: A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for
persons with mental disorders. Most became virtual prisons.
* The nineteenth century: reform and moral treatment
- Moral treatment: A nineteenth-century approach to treating people with mental dysfunction
that emphasized moral guidance and humane and respectful treatment.
- State hospitals: State-run public mental institutions in the United States.
* The early twentieth century: the somatogenic and psychogenic perspectives
- Somatogenic perspective: The view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes.
- Psychogenic perspective: The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological.
- Psychoanalysis: Either the theory or the treatment of abnormal mental functioning that
emphasizes unconscious psychological forces as the cause of psychopathology.
Current trends
* How are people with severe disturbances cared for?
- Psychotropic medications: Drugs that mainly affect the brain and reduce man symptoms of
mental dysfunctioning.
- Deinstitutionalization: The practice, begun in the 1960s, of releasing hundreds of thousands
of patients from public mental hospitals.
- 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.
* How are people with less severe disturbances treated?
Outpatient care.
* A growing emphasis on preventing disorders and promoting mental health.
- Prevention: Interventions aimed at deterring disorders before they develop.
- Positive psychology: The study and enhancement of positive feelings, traits, and abilities.
* Multicultural psychology:
- The field that examines the impact of culture, race, gender, and similar factors on our behaviors and
focuses on how such factors may influence abnormal behavior.
* The growing influence of insurance coverage.
- Managed care program: A system of health care coverage in which the insurance company
largely controls the nature, scope, and cost of service.
- A key problem with insurance coverage (both managed care and other kinds of insurance
programs) is that reimbursements for mental disorders tend to be lower than those for medical
disorders.
What do clinical researches do?
Scientific method: The process of systematically gathering and evaluating information through careful
observations to gain an understanding of a phenomenon.
* The case study:
- Case study: A detailed account of a person’s life and psychological problems.
- How are case studies helpful?
- They can be a source of new ideas about behavior and ‘open the way for discoveries’.
- They can show the value of new therapeutic techniques or unique applications of
existing techniques.
