Week 5 Key reading

Question 1

what does the BPS (2017) say about psychosis being best understood as mental illness?

Answer 1

• debate about whether it is accurate and/or useful to think of experiences like hearing voices as symptoms of mental illness
  
  • psychological approach aims to understand these experiences in the same way that we understand other thoughts and feelings.
  • makes sense to think of experiences like hearing voices in terms of a continuum.
  • diagnostic labels say little about the likely cause of the experiences, and do not appear to describe consistent patterns of problems relating to underlying biological abnormalities.

Question 2

what does the BPS (2017) say about a shared understanding of psychosis?

Answer 2

• Psychologists work by collaborating with people to develop a ‘formulation’: a shared understanding and description of the person’s main problems and what might help.
  
  • Formulations include possible causes, potential triggers, ideas about what might be keeping the problems going, and a summary of the strengths and resources that the person can draw on.
  • Formulations are useful in suggesting what might help.

Question 3

what does the BPS (2017) say about CBTp?

Answer 3

• Structured talking therapy looking at the way people understand and react to their experiences
  
  • Main assumption: distress partly related to the way people make sense of and respond to things
  • Therapist empathises with the distress and stresses it is understandable
  • Help them work out what is going on and identify vicious circles nd break out of them
  • Alternative explanations for thoughts
  • The most researched therapy is cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT).
    Trials have found that on average, people gain as much benefit from CBT as from medication.

Question 4

what does the BPS (2017) say mental health services need to do differently?

Answer 4

• Fundamental changes are required in the way we plan, commission and organise mental health services.
  
  • Services should take as their starting point that mental health is a contested area and should not insist that service users accept any one framework of understanding.
  • Professionals need to shift from seeing ourselves as treating disease to seeing ourselves as providing skilled help and support to people who are experiencing understandable distress.
  • Service structures need to allow workers the flexibility to tailor help to the particular needs of each person rather than offering standardised packages of care.

Question 5

Zurbin and Spring 1977 - vulnerability

Answer 5

• 6 approaches to aetiology that pre-empt the field:
  ○ Ecological, developmental, learning, genetic, internal environment, neurophysiological models
  
  • 2nd order model - vulnerability - as common denominator
  • Intensity of the stress and threshold tolerating the challenge is one’s vulnerability