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Summary Psychological Disorders
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Summary of 21 pages for the course Social Psychology at U of W (Includes diagrams)
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS● Psychopathology: mental illness; mental disorders are difficult to define.
○ Failure Analysis Approach: examines breakdowns in adaptation to help them
understand healthy functioning.
○ Mental illness is best captured by a family resemblance view: mental disorders
don’t all have one thing in common as they share a loose set of features. While
features include the criteria above, they can also include a need for treatment,
irrationality, and loss of control over one’s behaviour.
● Criteria for Mental Disorders:
○ Statistical Rarity: infrequent and uncommon in the population.
■ Ex. schizophrenia/Terrell’s condition
■ Exceptions: not all infrequent conditions–such as extraordinary
creativity–are pathological; mild depression is common.
○ Subjective Distress: produces emotional pain for afflicted individuals.
■ Ex. mood and anxiety disorders
■ Exceptions: someone who is bipolar might perceive their behaviours as
normal despite being manic; adolescents with conduct disorder
experiences less distress than others.
○ Impairment: interference with people’s ability to function in everyday life. These
disorders can destroy marriages, friendships, and jobs.
■ Exceptions: laziness can produce impairment but isn’t a mental disorder;
students don’t eat or sleep well during exam time due to coping
mechanisms, not mental maladjustment.
○ Societal Disapproval: public stigma and internalized shame.
○ Biological Dysfunction: breakdowns or failures of physiological systems.
■ Ex. schizophrenia is often marked by inactivity of the brain’s frontal lobes.
■ Exceptions: disorders like phobias are acquired largely through learning
experiences and often require only a weak genetic predisposition to
trigger them.
,● History of Mental Illness
○ “Psychiatric diagnoses are often shaped by the views and biases of the historical
period.”
○ The Middle Ages - Demonic Model of Mental Illness: many people in Europe and
North America attributed witchcraft and odd behaviours, such as hearing voices
or talking to oneself, to the actions of evil spirits infesting the body.
■ The Malleus Malleficarum (“The Witches’ Hammer”): a detailed manual,
released by two German priests, to assist in identifying witches through
foolproof indicators (ex. the dunking test). Many religious figures believed
witches were possessed by the devil, making the manual the second
best-seller after the Bible which played a key role in the 16th and 17th
century witch-hunts.
■ Exorcisms: a treatment for mental illness in the middle ages.
■ Drapetomania: a diagnosis applied by psychiatrists to describe the
“disorder” of slaves who attempted to escape from their master
repeatedly. Some physicians prescribed whipping and toe amputation as
“treatments.”
○ The Renaissance - The Medical Model of Mental Illness: mental illness was
perceived primarily as a physical disorder requiring medical treatment; more
scientific than the demonic model of mental illness.
■ Asylums: institutions for mentally-ill patients, originating from Europe in
the 15th century; many were overcrowded and understaffed.
■ Bloodletting: a treatment that drained patients of blood due to the belief
that excessive blood causes mental illness.
■ Snake Pit: a treatment where asylum staff tried to frighten patients “out
of their diseases” by tossing them into a pit of snakes.
■ Placebo Effect: improvement resulting from the expectation of
improvement.
■ Moral Treatment: an approach, introduced by Phillippe Pinel [France,
1748-1826] and Dorothea Dix [United States, 1802-1887] that advocated
for those with mental illness to be treated with dignity, kindness, and
respect. Prior to moral treatment, patients in asylums were often bound
in chains. After moral treatment, patients were free to roam the halls, get
fresh air, and interact with other staff and patients.
, ○ The Modern Era of Psychiatric Treatment: a dramatic change in society’s
treatment of individuals with mental illness during the 1950s when psychiatrists
introduced a medication from France called Thorazine chlorpromazine to treat
schizophrenia.
■ Deinstitutionalization: a government policy introduced in the 1960s and
1970s after medications were introduced; featured two major
components:
● 1) Releasing hospitalized psychiatric patients into the community.
● 2) Closing mental hospitals.
● While some patients returned to regular life, some were left
without adequate follow-up care and became homeless.
■ Efforts to improve the quality and availability of community care include:
community mental health centres and halfway houses– free or low cost
care and treatment facilities.
● Psychiatric Diagnoses and Culture
○ “Psychiatric diagnoses are shaped not only by history but also by culture.”
○ Culture-Bound Syndromes
■ Koro (Asia): a strange condition where male victims believe their genitals
are disappearing and receding into their abdomen; spread largely by
social contagion.
■ Mal De Ojo (“Evil Eye” - Mediterannean and Latin countries): insomnia,
nervousness, crying for no reason, and vomiting is believed to be brought
on by the glance of a malicious person.
■ Amok (Malaysia, Philippines & some African countries): a condition
marked by episodes of intense sadness and brooding followed by
uncontrolled behaviour and unprovoked attacks on people or animals.
■ Taijin Kyofusho (Japan): a social anxiety expressed as fear of offending
others by saying something offensive or giving off terrible body odour.
Japan is a collectivist culture that is concerned with their impact on
others.
■ Public Embarrassment (Canada & the US): a social anxiety in Canada and
the United States that is commonly generated by a fear of public
embarrassment.
■ Arctic Hysteria (Inuit): abrupt episode accompanied by extreme
excitement and frequently followed by convulsive seizures and coma.
■ Couvade Syndrome/Phantom Pregnancy: an expectant father’s
sympathetic labour pains, food cravings, nausea, even breast growth and
weight gain.
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