Notes of Developmental Disorders lectures, integrated with in-depth notes from the book "Abnormal Child and Adolescent Psychology" by Wicks-Nelson & Israel (8th edition)
• 50% of people will suffer of mental health problems at one point during their life (occurrence within a single
person)
• 13-14% prevalence for mental disorders (occurrence within a sample)
-Questions:
• What is normal?
• How do behavioral problems escalate?
• How do behavioral problems develop?
• How to prevent depression?
• How will developmental disorders be treated now and in the future?
-Today:
• What is normal?
• What is a developmental disorder?
• General development framework
• 5 Models of Child Psychopathology
• Developmental Psychopathology as an academic discipline
I. What is normal?
• Statistical normality: do one behave as the majority of others do?
• But from a diagnostic point of view, do we need to treat someone just because his/her behavior is different from
the majority of others?
• When someone behaves differently and this leads him/her not to function or adjust, then probably treatment is
needed
→Identification of problems of youth
Developmental disorders are multifaceted. There are different factors that influence what we perceive as normal or
not.
• Situational norms: are you able to adjust to different situations? Or do you behave the same in every situation?
E.g. distinguish how to behave with friends or at school
• Changing views of abnormality: what is considered abnormal or normal is in a process of constant change. E.g.
masturbation or homosexuality once were considered as abnormal
,• Developmental norms: something can be normal at a certain age, but later isn’t normal anymore. E.g. toilet
training in your 30s (delay in development or regression)
• Role of adults: adults are the one who value normal or abnormal behavior and set expectations for youngsters
• Cultural norms: what is normal depends on culture
• Gender norms: labelling about what is normal occurs differently between genders
II. Developmental disorders
→Development
• Development: change over the lifespan that results from ongoing transactions of an individual with biological,
psychological, and sociocultural variables, which themselves are changing
• Qualitative change is more important than quantitative
• Development follows a general course, which requires integration within and across systems
• Development is a never ending pathway
• Change can be both positive and negative
→Psychopathology is behavior that once was, but no longer can be, considered appropriate to the child’s level of
development
• 15-20% prevalence (or 13-22)
• 10% serious, 10% mild
• Often comorbidity
• Increased risk of disorders for youngsters? Well, secular trends are difficult to understand and analyze
• 2/3 to 3/4 of youth with a diagnosable disorder do not receive help
• Abnormal=away from the average
• When does a child deviate from the developmental norms/standards? When there is/are….
✓ Developmental delay
✓ Regression or deterioration
✓ Extremely high or low frequency
✓ Extremely high or low intensity
✓ Behavioral difficulty persists over time
✓ Behavior is inappropriate to the situation
✓ Abrupt changes in behavior
✓ Several problems behaviors
✓ Behavior qualitatively different from normal
• Norms that are significant
✓ Culture/ethnicity
✓ Gender (male: externalizing/more disorders, female: internalizing, eating disorders)
✓ Age (autism→ADHD→learning problems→conduct disorders→drug abuse/eating disorders/schizophrenia)
✓ Social factors (higher expectations, more family divorce)
✓ Lifestyle changes (focus on body size, more drug abuse)
✓ Perspective of adults
,• Males: autism, ADHD, oppositional disorder, drug abuse, intellectual disability, conduct disorder, language
disorder, reading disability
✓ Neurodevelopmental disorders early in life
✓ Overt physical aggression
✓ Externalizing problems drop with age, internalizing problems almost stable
• Females: anxiety and fears, depression, eating disorder
✓ Emotional problems and disorders in adolescence
✓ Relational covert aggression
✓ Externalizing problems drop with age, internalizing problems increase
→Developmental psychopathology: the study of developmental processes that contribute to, or protect against,
psychopathology.
• Etiology (causes of mental illness) and pathophysiology (physiological causes of mental illness) are still unknown
• Therapeutic interventions are only partially effective, are still mainly symptomatic and often do not bring
complete cure
• A large number and wide diversity of treatments for children currently exist, many of which are expensive,
intrusive, and not supported by scientific data (Mash & Wolfe, 2007)
III. General developmental framework
→History:
• 19th century: demonology (abnormal behavior as result of being possessed by demons) and somatogenesis
(belief that mental disorder can be attributed to bodily malfunction or imbalance)
• Kraepelin: identified syndromes (clusters of symptoms)
• Freud and psychoanalytic theory
✓ Critical towards psychogenesis (idea that mental problems are caused by psychological variables)
✓ Id, ego, superego
✓ Theory of psychosexual development:
o Oral Stage (0-1 year)
o Anal Stage (1-3 years)
o Phallic Stage (3 to 5 or 6 years)
o Latency Stage (5 or 6 to puberty)
o Genital Stage (puberty to adult)
• Behaviorism: most behavior can be explained by learning experiences
✓ Pavlov
✓ Watson
✓ Use of experimental methods
✓ Thorndike law of effect: behavior is shaped by its consequences (pleasant or unpleasant)
✓ Skinner
✓ Social learning or cognitive-behavioral perspective: combination of learning principles and the social context
and/or cognition
• th
20 century: mental hygiene movement (increase understanding, improve treatment and prevent disorders),
child guidance movement (increase children’s mental health) and scientific study of youth (e.g. Binet-Simon test
of intelligence)
• Today
✓ Psychological problems usually stem from multiple causes
✓ Normal and abnormal behavior go hand in hand
✓ Use of systematic conceptualization, observation, data collection and hypothesis testing
✓ Treatment and prevention programs
✓ High quality care
✓ Importance of well-being
-Five contexts:
, • Biological
• Individual
• Family
• Social
• Cultural
→Perspectives, theories, models
• Paradigm: certain perspective shared by investigators; a certain view of the world/a problem/a situation
• Theory: a formal, integrated, set of principles or propositions that explain phenomena
• Model: a representation or description of the phenomenon of study
→Ecological/System and Transactional models (Bronfenner / Sameroff)
• Transactional model (right pic): society/surroundings influences person and person influences
society/surroundings. The transactional model of development assumes that infants, caregivers, and their
environment determine the child's developmental and behavioral outcome. This model differs from other
models in which the child or the caregivers or the environment unilaterally determines outcome. The
transactional model of development holds that the child and the caregiving environment tend to alter each
other mutually. Seen in these terms, child development is more than a two-way street; it is an intimate and
complex interaction.
• Ecological/systems model (left pic): a child typically finds himself simultaneously enmeshed in different
ecosystems, from the most intimate home ecological system moving outward to the larger school system and
the most expansive system which is society and culture. Each of these systems inevitably interact with and
influence each other in every aspect of the child’s life. These systems are the microsystem, mesosystem,
exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem.
→Vulnerability-stress model
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