One explanation of depression is that given by the behaviourist perspective, which assumes that all behaviour, including depression, is learnt. Typically of the behavioural approach, it refers to the two main processes: operant conditioning (learning via punishment and reinforcement) and classical conditioning (learning via association).
Seligman's infamous "learned helplessness" study which showed how dogs can be conditioned not to try to remove themselves from a negative situation demonstrated how operant conditioning could potentially lead to depression.
One study which illustrates the behaviourist explanation of depression in humans is Lewinson et al (1990). The study aimed to compare the amount of positive reinforcements received by depressed and non-depressed patients. The sample consisted of 30 participants; a selection of these had depression, some had other disorders, and some were not diagnosed with any disorder.
It was thus an independent measures design quasi-experiment. Both the IV (the number of positive reinforcements) and the DV (depression rating) were given via self-report, through a "pleasant events schedule" and a "depression adjective checklist" where participants had to tick the adjectives they felt applied to their mood.
The results found that there was a significant positive correlation between mood ratings and pleasant activities, however there were individual differences. Thus, it was concluded that positive reinforcement is likely to be one of several factors involved in depression.
Therefore, the behaviourist explanation of depression is that depression is the result of conditioning and learning, and processes such as positive reinforcement are important influencing factors in the extent to which someone feels depressed.
Evaluate the difficulties when identifying characteristics of psychological disorders?
ReplyDeletewhat would good evaluative points be to use...ethnocentrism? would this question be centred mainly around the DSM and ICD, or would you talk about behavioural biological and cognitive explanations of disorders?
Issues with identifying disorders:
Delete1. Highly subjective - a lot of the descriptions of characteristic refer to "excessive" or "irrational", but these are subjective not objective descriptions. This could lead to poor validity and reliability.
2. Requires self-report from individuals who may not perceive their behaviour as abnormal or dysfunctional, or who may be prone to lying/disordered thoughts and social desirability. Validity is an issue here too.
3. There is significant overlap between disorders e.g. loss of pleasure is a factor in depression and schizophrenia, whilst bipolar disorders and schizophrenia can feature delusions and disordered actions. Anxiety is also somewhat common amongst people who are depressed, due to feelings of worthlessness and pessimistic depressive thought patterns.
You need to really centre this on the characteristics rather than anything else. You could also mention specific issues such as how a lot of symptoms may not be always evident in psychiatric evaluations, such as loss of pleasure in daily activities, or disordered actions. Thus it's unobservable. However you do of course have the patient to recall these.
Evaluate suggests you need to identify difficulties but also put a judgement on them, which you could do by suggesting which difficulties are most and least important, and to what extent they affect validity and reliability, etc.
Just to add to the advice of the author.. Definitely do center you answer around the advantages and disadvantages of classification systems (DSM/ ICD). Some biases which could be examined are:
ReplyDeleteReliability: The consistency of diagnoses. We would expect all psychiatrists to diagnose the same set of symptoms in the same way. One way this can be done is with inter-rater relibility, for example in studies such as Pedersen et al., (2001) researchers compared the consistency of diagnoses and found that 71% of psychiatrists agreed with the ICD-10 definition of depression when assessing 116 patients.
Validity: Diagnoses may be consistent but what if they are wrong? Rosenhan's classic study shows this when nearly all psuedo-patients were incorrectly diagnosed with schizophrenia
Also bringing up the issue of type 1 and type 2 errors: Rosenhan's study brought psychiatrists type 2 errors to light (diagnosing someone with an illness when in fact they do not have one). Type 1 errors on the other hand consist of diagnosing a patient without an illness when in fact they do have one. Obviously type 2 would be the safer option, to ensure extra tests and care is taken (just incase the patient really does need it), nevertheless it is a waste of time.
Useful points also include:
Ethnocentrism: This questions the international validity of diagnoses. For example they may be biased to certain countries, certainly the DSM is an american invention by the APA and therefore may bring into play wrong diagnoses based on racism.
Gender bias: Ford and widiger (1989) raised the fundamental question of why those involved in diagnosing and classifying disorders are predominantly men, when those being diagnosed and treated are mainly women? The issue with this is that normal stereotypical gender roles might be incorrectly labelled as pathological. When presented with identical case histories (apart from gender - control), 354 psychologists diagnosed women mainly with histrionic personality disorder, whereas men were more likely to be diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder.
Hope this helps.
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