PSYC30014 Lecture Notes - Spring 2018 Lecture 1 - Dementia, Neurochemistry, Psychodynamics
Document Summary
Notions of normality and abnormality of behaviour, thoughts and emotions vary across time, place and culture and are emotionally laden: defining key terms. Treatment and outcome: understanding and being able to describe psychopathology is a key skill for clinicians. Common terminology descriptive psychology: presenting problem. Incidence new cases over a time period. Prevalence proportion of population with disorder. Prognosis: signs objective findings observed by a clinician. Eg. tachycardia, accelerated speech, poor eye contact: symptoms subjective complaints reported by a patient. Eg. low mood, derealisation, paranoia: syndrome signs, symptoms and events that occur in a particular pattern and indicate the existence of a disorder. Systematic: disorder a syndrome which can be discriminated from other syndromes. Age and gender characteristics have been described. Indications of abnormal physiological processes or structural abnormalities must be present eg. multi-infarct dementia. Neurological abnormalities: the purpose of diagnosing psychopathology. Communication among clinicians and between science and practice.
