Why is it important to study child clinical psychology?
Because many mental disorders begin during childhood or adolescence and develop over time.
What are the 3 main definitions of abnormal behaviour
- Personal distress
- Statistical Deviance
- Social Non-Conformity
What are 2 benefits of studying childhood mental disorders?
- It helps researchers understand how disorders emerge and evolve into adulthood.
- It allows early intervention and prevention before full disorders develop.
What does it mean that childhood is a social construct?
Society determines how childhood is defined and when it ends.
What is the personal distress definition of abnormal behaviour?
Behaviour is abnormal if it causes significant subjective distress.
Example of personal distress definition?
Feeling extremely depressed or anxious
Limitations of personal distress definition?
- Normal events (like grief) can cause distress but are not disorders.
- Some people may not recognize their own distress (especially children).
What is the statistical deviance definition of abnormal behaviour?
Behaviour that is rare compared to the general population.
Limitation of statistical deviance definition?
- Not everything rare is problematic (e.g., genius intelligence).
- Some disorders like depression are actually common.
Q: What is the social nonconformity definition of abnormal behaviour?
A: Behaviour that violates social or moral norms.
Q: Major limitation of social nonconformity definition?
A: Cultural norms change over time -> can contribute to social injustices
Q: Example of social nonconformity changing over time?
A: Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder until 1973.
Q: Who proposed the harmful dysfunction definition?
A: Jerome Wakefield.
Q: What two conditions define a mental disorder in the harmful dysfunction model?
A: Harm to the person or others AND failure of a mental mechanism to perform its natural function.
Q: Limitations of harmful dysfunction definition?
- We don’t fully understand the brain’s natural functions.
- Cultural norms change over time -> can contribute to social injustices
What are the three definitions of abnormal behaviour?
- Personal distress
- Statistical deviance
- Social non-conformity
How does DSM-5 define a mental disorder?
A syndrome with clinically significant disturbances in cognition, emotion, or behaviour caused by dysfunction in psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning
Q: What must mental disorders usually cause according to DSM-5?
A: Significant distress or impairment in functioning in social, occupational, or other important activities
Exceptions made by DSM 5 to their own definition of mental disorders
- An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss -> e.g. death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder
- Socially deviant behaviour (e.g. political, religious or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders -> unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual as described in definition
What did Thomas Szasz argue?
- that mental illness is just a convenient label for behavior that either society or the individual in question finds unwanted or unpleasant.
- abnormal behavior is a social phenomenon that may be a perfectly normal response to an abnormal environment.
- “Problems of living” rather than true medical diseases.
Looking back historically, what are the three main schools of thought that informed the way we view child clinical psychology today?
- Early biological attributes
- Psychoanalytic theory
- behaviourism
Q: What did the biological perspective argue?
A: Mental disorders result from biological problems.
Q: Limitation of early biological view?
A: It focused mainly on severe disorders and assumed conditions were irreversible.
Q: What did psychoanalytic theory emphasize?
A: Childhood experiences and unconscious processes.
