This is content from the introductory lecture containing definition of mental disorders, psychiatric classifications, diathesis-stress model.
What is a mental disorder
Mental health is defined by the WHO as a state of wellveing in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with normal stresses of life and can work productivly and fruitfully and is able to contrivute to his or her own community.
However mental wellbeing and health is a spectrum.
What is a mental disorder
Defined as:
“A psychiatric illness or disease whose manifestations are characterised primarily be behavioural or psychological impaitment of functioning, measured in therms of deviation from some normative concept; associated with distress or disease, not just an expected response to a particualr event or limited to relations between a person and society”
Basically it causes
- Psychological dysfunction
- Distress of impariment
- Atypical response
Psychiatric classifications
The 2 main classifications are:
- DSM-V TR
- ICD-11
Advantages and disadvantages of the DSM (important for exams)
Advantages
- Standardises billing and coding
- Stardardises diagnoses anf treatment
- guides research
- Guides treatment Disadvantages
- Oversimplfies human behaviour
- Increases risk of misdiagnosis
- Provides labels which can be stigmatizing
Diathesis-stress model
Development of a mental disorder using diathesis stress
This is the model where eveyone one has a threshold for developing a mental illness, and their genetic factors and environmental factors determine if they have crossed this threshold. They could be above this threshold from birth or be pushed by environmental circumstances.