PSY 245 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Tunxis Community College, Mental Disorder, Stressor

• School: Tunxis Community College
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 245
• Professor: Bourne

Document Summary

Focused on how other people, social institutions, and social forces influences a person"s mental health. Sociocultural factors: culture, gender, neighborhoods and communities, family. Strength: focuses on environmental factors and family; highlights the importance of social influences. Limitation: hard to measure; lack of evidence. A biological or psychological predisposition to disorder. Produced by a combination of predisposition and stress. Stressor is any event, experience, or environmental stimulus that causes stress in an individual. Posits that mental health disorders are produced by a combination of predisposition (i. e. , diathesis) and stress. We must understand the etiology, or cause, of mental disorders including: aspects of all theoretical models and risk factors. Diathesis and stressors can also interact with each other. A diathesis can influence a person"s perception of stress. Predispositions also influence our life course and choice of experiences. Prevalence rate; incidence rate; epidemiology; life-time prevalence. An individual or environmental characteristic that precedes a mental disorder and is correlated with the disorder.