Lecture summary notes Mental Health and Wellbeing Psychology
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Course
Understanding Mental Health
Institution
The University Of West London
Well summarised lecture notes on module Understanding Mental Health, lecture Mental Health and Wellbeing, providing good preparation for either test or essay.
• “Mental health problems can affect the way you think, feel and behave. They affect
around one in four people in Britain, and range from common mental health
problems, such as depression and anxiety, to more rare problems such as
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A mental health problem can feel just as bad, or
worse, as any other physical illness – only you cannot see it.” Mind Website (source).
• Wellbeing: a sense of meaning and satisfaction.
• Mental health is conceptualised as a continuum, from positive mental health to
mental distress.
- Where on the continuum is abnormal (Or where do mental health problems being)?
- Even more difficult, where on the continuum is positive? Is positive also abnormal?
• How we conceptualise the nature & cause of abnormal behaviour has implications
for:
1) How we conceptualise treatment and the need for treatment.
2) What we see or look for (or don’t see) in research.
Ways of defining what is “abnormal”
• Social norms?
• Failure to function adequately (maladaptive behaviour).
• Deviation from “ideal mental health”.
• Statistical deviation.
• Personal distress.
• Medical disorder (biological).
• Symptom checklist.
Social Norms
• A person has a mental disorder if they have experiences and exhibit behaviours that
are inconsistent with the norms and values of society.
• Examples:
• Behaviour that is harmful to oneself or others.
, • Poor reality contact.
• Inappropriate emotional reactions.
• Erratic behaviour.
• Problems:
- What if violation is result of external circumstances?
Failure to function adequately (Maladaptive behaviour). 1.
• A person has a mental disorder if they engage in behaviour that prevents them from
meeting the demands of life (e.g., work).
• Problems:
- There may be situations that people should not adapt to.
- This approach emphasizes “fitting in” as being ultimately important.
Failure to function adequately (Maladaptive behaviour). 2.
• A person has a mental disorder when a mental mechanism is not performing the
natural function it was designed to perform (e.g., not motivated to get out of bed).
• Problems:
- What is adequate performance?
- Natural selection does not “design” mechanisms.
• For many mechanisms there is a wide range of adaptive functioning across
people and situations (fear response, anxiety).
• Many things that we want to call a disorder might actually be adaptive
reactions.
Deviation from “Ideal Mental Health”.
• People who deviate from “ideal mental health” could be considered “abnormal”.
• Problems:
- What is ideal?
- Who defines this? The person? Medical professionals? Governments?
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