PSYCH 2GG3 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Mental Disorder, Norm Social, Medicine
PSYCH 2GG3
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Monday 8th January 2018
Lecture 1
Health and Aging
Introduction
• Midterm and final are cumulative.
• Multiple choice and long answer.
• Essay 32% 5-6 pages 6 peer reviewed sources.
• Essay is due march 5th, but there is an optional extension march 12th.
• Online discussions 10%, 4 questions 200 words each due April 2nd.
Why mental health
• Mental health and physical health are treated differently.
• They are treated differently in the government, in medicine, academically.
• The separation is not always so clear cut, sometimes they are not really that separate.
• Mental health can be expressed physically.
• There is a belief that the cause of mental health issues is biological.
• The medical model says that foundationally the cause is rooted in the physical body.
• These two are linked, we should not treat the separately, but we also need to realize
that they are not one in the same.
• We aot gauge a perso’s etal health just y lookig at their ody.
• These things are connected but also separate so mental health needs more attention.
• Because we cannot measure mental health through the body means we cannot measure
it objectively.
• It is based on value judgements, especially because they come from self reporting.
• This is what makes it unique.
• Most physical health depends less on physical reporting.
• This means the person themselves impacts how they experience mental health, the
same goes for the practitioner making the judgment call.
• Mental health are thoughts moods beliefs and behaviors.
Good mental health
• There is no clear definition.
• We assume that those who are not mentally ill are mentally healthy.
• This is problematic.
• Just because someone cannot be diagnosed or meet all the criteria this does not mean
they are mentally well.
• The system of exclusion does not work, however there are some signs of good mental
health.
• These are broader considerations.
• The ability to get on in life and connect with other people.
• We need to realize that these things are not individual variables.
find more resources at oneclass.com
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• This depends on the social environment, political environment, what ad who you are
surrounded by.
• People are able to enjoy and handle stress, have and pursue goals and have a sense of
psychological and emotionally wellbeing.
• These things are problematic.
• There are barriers to some of these things.
• These ideas are also grounded in individualism; they are factors of the western world.
• In places that are collectivistic, these could be seen as narcissistic.
• We treat the world of mental health as a science.
• However, we need to understand that our concepts may not be universal.
• We assume universality but this does not make much sense.
• All of this suggests that there is a social barrier to what we think defines mental health.
Poor mental health
Disorder model
• This is the medical model.
• This is how we generally think about mental health.
• Mental disorder exists.
• They are discrete categories that are separate.
• We think of them like diseases, each one has its causes and treatments.
• It is binary, you either have this disorder or you do not, there is not much ambiguity.
• Each disorder has a list of symptoms, there is a checklist.
• This model suggests that there are some aspects of normality, we can delineate
between who has this and who does not.
• We know who the really sad people are versus those who are naturally sad.
• One either is or is not mentally disordered.
Distress model
• People say the medical model has too many shortcomings.
• Rather than thinking of the disorders as binary, we should look at mental illness on a
spectrum.
• All individuals experience signs of mental health, but where you are on the spectrum
really determines the issue.
• Do not assume whether they have the disorder or not, just think about where they are
on the spectrum.
• Everyone experiences these issues some just experience them differently or more
intensely.
• They are not qualitatively different, all of these behaviors and feeling are normal, it is
just a question of extent.
• Some people will have more difficulty, but calling it a disease might be mislabeling.
• Ow can it be a disease when we did not know the cause, it is not grounded in specificity.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Good mental health: there is no clear definition, we assume that those who are not mentally ill are mentally healthy, this is problematic. It also takes a wide variability of human experience and reduces it to a simple checklist. It ignored the broader notion of mental health. It measures people against a list of predetermined mental disorders. It does not explain suffering and anguish in a way that shows human experience, it is cold and inflexible. It is simply an interpretation grounded in value judgments of the patient and the clinician. Key themes: how we take madness which is loosely define and not understood as a problem with the brain. It continued in some places until past the 19th century: on one hand there were many responses to madness, but they were critical. I(cid:374) the (cid:1005)(cid:1010)(cid:1004)(cid:1004)"s, there is a lot of e(cid:448)idence that madness was a popular part of the pop culture.
