PSYA02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder
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PSYA02H3 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Symptoms reflecting abnormalities of the mind are called psychological or mental disorders. To qualify as a mental disorder, thoughts, feelings, and emotions must be persistent, harmful to the person experiencing them and uncontrollable. The medical model is the conceptualization of psychological disorders as diseases that , like physical diseases have biological causes, defined symptoms, and possible cures. Psychological disorders are new because in the past, abnormalities were tied in with supernatural or religion. In some religions or countries madness is still looked at as being possessed. In many other countries and societies, including our own, people with psychological disorders are feared, ridiculed and often treated as criminals. These ways of looking at psychological orders have been replaced by a medical model. First step to determine nature of the problem is through diagnosis. Clinicians seek to determine the nature of the patient"s mental disease by assessing symptoms-behaviours, thoughts and emotions suggestive of an underlying syndrome.
