Sociocultural Perspective

Sociocultural perspective: normal and abnormal thinking/behavior is shaped within context of social interactions, family influences, social group, and culture ● Cultural Relativity: need to consider the unique characteristics of the culture in which behavior takes place to correctly diagnose and treat the disorder ○ Ex. Asian disorders is shameful to person and family, holistic view of mind and body so depression or schizo report as body symptoms rather than mental or emotional ○ Chinese Americans report somatic (physical headaches, insomnia) from depression, Japanese = interpersonal issues, Europeans = depressed mood and hopelessness ○ ○ depression experience varies in ethnic groups ● Cultural Syndromes: particular symptoms of distress in cultures, may or may not be recognized as an illness within the culture ● Cultural Idioms of Distress: terms describing suffering/distress in cultural context ● Cultural Explanations/Perceived Cause: culturally explaining the source or cause of symptoms/illness Biopsychosocial Perspective: All of the Above: abnormal thinking/behavior is from combination of forces from biological psychological, social, and cultural influences The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5): changes in organization of disorders, modifications in terminology to describe them, and possible assessments, provides clinicals with diagnosing mental disorders subclinical/subsyndromal, if do not meet criteria, then is very close and in distress ● Labels are helpful for professionals as a common language, but can be prejudicial ● David Rosenhan study: called healthy participants “pseudopatients” and acted normal but the hospital staff thought they were ill even if their action were normal ○ Psychological labels are long-lasting, affects how other people see patients and how they see themselves as a bias and affects judgement ● Psychology Student’s Syndrome: see ordinary variations as a mental disorder Empircally Validated Treatment: Threatments shown effective by properly controlled studies Counselors; focus on less severly impaired, assist with non clinical issues (relationships, careers) an praice with MA Psychlogists: focus on disorders, practice – research – asssessment, Ph.D Psychiatrists: medical training on disorders, Physicians, perscriptions Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): promotes research of advances as a knowledge base for classifying psychological disorders ● Negative Valence Systems: primarily responsible for responses to aversive situations contains constructs of negative emotions: fear, anxiety, and loss 26.2-32.4% of American adults over 18 suffer from mental disorder (1 in 5 adults) Mood Disorders: disorders in which mood is severely disturbed AKA affective disorders ● Affect: indicating emotion or mood (bipolar or depressive disorders) Extreme Sadness – Mild Sadness – Normal Emotions – Mild Elation – Extreme Elation Major Depressive Disorder: severe depression that comes on suddenly with no external cause or is too severe for current circumstances (far extreme of sadness) need at least 5 of the items from DMS-5 ● AKA Unipolar disorder: emotional problem exists at one end/pole of range ● Major depressive disorder: depressed most of day, tired, delusional thinking, hallucinations daily and long-lasting... sucide ● Mood disorders higher in women due to hormonal changes during pregnancy and focus on negative emotions -> gender decreasing in college as both sad ● children screen time increases depression Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Depression higher in fall/winter and lower in spring/summer due to body reactions to low levels of light in winter months ● Visual cortex, frontal lobe, limbic areas affected by light exposure ● Just cuz someone is depressed in winter doesn’t mean they are depressed because of winter CAUSATION NO EQUAL CORRELATION Bipolar Disorder: periods of mood that ranges from normal – manic with/without depression episodes or spans of normal mood with episodes of major depression and hypomania, experiences 2 extreme moods without any real cause ● Manic: having excessive excitement, energy, and elation or irritability ○ Happy without any real cause, restlessness, irritability, unlimited energy, rapid and jump topic speech ○ Hypomania: elevated mood but less severe than full mania ○ Connection of bipolar and onset of ADHD in adolescence: higher ADHD rates among relatives of bipolar individual and vise versa, if children have both then their relatives are likely to have both but not if only have 1 ■ Hyperactivity is a symptom of both and respond similarly with same deficits in information-processing abilities. But having both disorders preform worse than those with just ADHD -> neurological deficits are due to ADHD. Bipolar suffer from more severe emotional and behavior problems and impaired sleep