TOPIC 8: Psychosocial Approaches to Psychopathology
In the Butcher, Mineka, & Hooley text: Chapter 3, pages 91-102; Chapter 4, pp 125-128,
132-133, and 135-137; Chapter 5, pp 146-148, 149-150, 151-152, 153, 158-161, 161163, 165-166, 167-168, 170-172, and 174; Chapter 6, pp 193-203, 208-209, 213-215,
217-218, and 220-221; Chapter 7, pp 231, 237, 245-248, and 248-249; Chapter 8, pp
266-268 and 270; Chapter 9, pp 285, 291, 292, 294-295, 296, 298, 299, 300-301, 306310, 311-312; Chapter 10, pp 324-328 and 329-332; Chapter 11, pp 359-360 and
370; Chapter 14, pp 442-443, 444, 445-447, 448, 450, 451, 452, 453, and 457-458.
8.1 Affective Models: Emotion and Psychodynamics
8.1.1 Studying Psychodynamics: Freud and Psychoanalysis
• Freud's fundamental "discovery": a psychological way of understanding
and treating psychopathology
• Unconscious impulses, conflict and defense, symptom formation
• Neo-Freudians and alternative psychodynamics
• Humanistic and existential models: self-concept and self-esteem, values
and authenticity
• Pop psych and psychobabble
8.1.2 Psychodynamic Factors in Psychopathology
• Unconscious anxiety and anxiety disorders
• Attachment and depression
• Depression as hostility turned inward
• Secondary gain and somatoform disorders
• Anorexia as a defense against sexuality
• Neuroticism, perfectionism, addictive personality, and other pathogenic traits
• Repression of trauma and dissociation
8.2 Behavioral Models: Learning and Conditioning
8.2.1 Behavioral Principles
• Classical (respondent) conditioning
• Operant (instrumental) conditioning: the ABC approach (antecedent-behaviorconsequence)
• Social learning: modeling and reinforcement
8.2.2 Psychopathology and Learning
• Classical conditioning of fear and anxiety inducing stimuli
• Secondary gain as reinforcement (sympathy, attention)
• Loss of reinforcement, extinction, and depression
• Conditioned helplessness
• Observational learning of alcohol and drug use/abuse
• The role of models (literally) in eating disorders
• Absence of fear-conditioning in antisocial personality disorder
8.3 Cognitive Models
8.3.1 Cognitive Psychology
• Attributions and schemas
• Expectancies
• Problem-solving and coping styles
• Self-efficacy
8.3.2 Cognitive Factors in Psychopathology
• Perception of danger, sensitivity to threat in anxiety disorders
• Catastrophic thinking in panic disorder
• The paradoxical effect of thought suppression in OCD and GAD
• Dysfunctional beliefs and Beck's negative triad (self, experiences, future)
• Pathogenic attributions: helplessness and hopelessness
• Attributional styles: internal/external, global/specific, stable/unstable)
• Expectancies and alcohol and drug use
• Executive control, delay of gratification and disruptive behavior disorders,
antisocial personality disorder
8.4 Developmental Models
8.4.1 Family and Interpersonal Models
• Socialization
• The family as a system
• Parent-child relationships and parenting
• Peer influences
8.4.2 Family and Interpersonal Influences on Psychopathology
• Family adversity
• Anxious attachment
• Authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful parenting
• Abuse
• Expressed emotion (EE)
• Social support as a protective factor, absence of support as a pathogenic factor
8.4.3 Social Sources of Stress
• Trauma
• Major life events
• Interpersonal conflicts
• Societal conditions (economy, social unrest, inter-group conflict, etc.)
8.4.4 Stress and Psychopathology
• Precipitating vulnerabilities (diathesis-stress)
• Exhaustion and decompensation
• Stress as an aggravating factor
• Maladaptive coping and adjustment disorders
• Trauma and ASD/PTSD
• Stress and mood disorders
• Stress and physical health
8.4.5 Society, Culture, and Psychology
• Do cultures have "personalities"?
• Cross-national comparisons
• Epidemiological research and the role of sub-cultures
• Gender and depression
• Standards of beauty, the media, and eating disorders
• Ethnicity and substance use disorders
• Culture and sexual dysfunction
• Gender, society, and paraphilias and sexual violence
• Culture and child abuse
8.5 Psychological Treatment Methods
8.5.1 An Overview of Psychosocial Approaches
• The major "schools": insight (psychodynamic), expressive (humanistic), learning
(behavioral), thinking (cognitive)
• Evidence-based treatment (data over theory)
• Non-specific factors
• "Side-effects"?
8.5.2 Psychosocial Approaches to Emotional Distress
• Traditional psychodynamic and humanistic approaches still very popular, widely
variable
• Behavioral and cognitive-behavioral methods gaining traction, especially with
anxiety disorders and depressive disorders
8.5.3 Psychosocial Approaches to Problem Behaviors
• Traditional psychodynamic and humanistic approaches becoming less popular,
widely variable
• Behavioral and cognitive-behavioral methods gaining traction, especially in
treating behavior disorders in children, substance use disorders, eating disorders
8.5.4 Psychosocial Approaches to Personality Disorders
• Success rates by any means are low, tendency to emphasize long-term
traditional psychotherapy
• Dialectical behavior therapy and borderline personality disorder
8.5.5 Psychosocial Approaches to Major Mental Illness
• Primarily secondary and supportive of medication-focused treatment
• Growing evidence of success for behavioral interventions with children on the
autism spectrum, schizophrenia
8.5.6 Community-Based Approaches
• Primary (universal) and secondary (selective) prevention