Psychological Disorders and Mental Health
This domain covers how abnormality is defined, the main disorder categories, and mental-health approaches. Expect symptom-identification questions and distinctions between positive and negative symptoms.
Defining abnormality
- Criteria include statistical infrequency, violation of norms, personal distress, dysfunction and danger.
- DSM-5 and ICD are classification systems, not explanations of cause.
Disorders
- Anxiety: generalised anxiety, panic, phobias; OCD and PTSD are separate DSM-5 chapters.
- Mood: major depression, bipolar disorder.
- Schizophrenia: positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech) and negative symptoms (flat affect, alogia, avolition).
- Personality disorders: antisocial, borderline.
Mental health
- WHO frames mental health as well-being, coping and productivity.
- Treatments include CBT, psychoanalysis, humanistic therapy and biomedical approaches; stigma reduction is a public-health goal.
Worked example
A person hears voices that others do not. Reasoning: this is a hallucination, a positive symptom of schizophrenia because it adds an experience rather than removing one.
Traps
- OCD is no longer grouped under anxiety disorders in DSM-5.
- Positive symptoms are added experiences; negative symptoms are losses.
- Sadness alone is not major depression; duration, severity and impairment matter.