AbnormalPsychology_2b.pptVIP

Classification Research The study of mental disorder involves: Definition: What do we mean by mental disorder? Classification: How do we distinguish between different mental disorders? Explanation: How do we understand mental disorder? Treatment: How do we treat mental disorder? Example Animal Dog Cat LINNAEAN ?CLASSIFICATION Kingdom:??Animalia ?Phylum:??Chordata???Subphylum:??Vertebrata??????Class:??Mammalia?????????Subclass:??Theria????????????Infraclass:??Eutheria??????????????Order:??Primates????????????????Suborder:??Anthropoidea?????????????????Superfamily:??Hominoidea???????????????????Family:??Hominidae?????????????????????Genus:??Homo???????????????????????Species:??sapiens Why is it important to classify mental disorders? Scientific communication and research Treatment Classification and Diagnosis Classification systems exists before and independently any individual Individual people are said to be diagnosed or put into the classification system based on a psychological assessment Evaluating classification systems and assessment tools? Reliability: Gives the same answer with repeated measurement or assessment Test re-test Inter-rater or inter-judge Evaluating classification systems and assessment tools? Validity: Measures or assesses what it claims to measure Descriptive, construct Predictive Three broad ways to classify mental disorder Categorical Approach Dimensional Approach Prototypal Approach Categorical Approach Characteristic of medical diagnostic systems. Assumptions: Behavior can be divided into categories of “healthy” and “disordered”. There are discreet, non-overlapping types of “disorder” Members of each diagnostic group share the same features. Dimensional Approach Characteristic of personality assessment approaches. Assumptions: Behavior comes from different strengths/intensities of underlying attributes (e.g., aggressiveness, introversion). People differ along a continuum of normality to abnormality on these dimensions. Proto