PSY 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Mental Disorder, Presenting Problem, Psychopathology

• School: Stony Brook University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 230
• Professor: Apajita Mohanty

Document Summary

Pros: minimal overlap between different disorders, makes it easy to study different disorders, cons: Each patients gets a quantifiable score (0-100) on various dimensions. Pros: more complex/accurate description of individuals, better reflection of nature/reality. Provides rich, detailed information about severity of different symptoms: cons: Still need to choose a cut-off number for a disorder: how many and which dimensions should we be using, how to decide who gets reimbursed, doesn"t point to a specific treatment, more overlap between different disorders. Psychopathology: the scientific study of psychological disorders: use quantitive methods, studies, experiments to determine what disorders look like, causes, etc. Individuals who seek treatment for psychopathology are known as patients or client. Presenting problem: the issue the client or patient comes in with. Symptoms: subjective experience of an individual, reported by the patient. Signs: observations by a professional: diagnosis: identification of the present of a disorder based on signs and symptoms.