Psychological Disorders
Psychological Disorders
This domain tests how abnormal behaviour is defined, classified and described. Expect criteria for disorder, major diagnostic categories, symptom patterns, and distinctions between normal distress and clinical conditions.
Core rules
- Abnormal behaviour is judged by deviance, distress, dysfunction and danger, but cultural context and duration matter.
- Classification systems such as ICD and DSM organise disorders; a diagnosis is not a label for the whole person.
- Anxiety disorders include generalised anxiety, panic disorder and phobias; OCD involves obsessions and/or compulsions that are time-consuming or distressing.
- Trauma- and stressor-related disorders include acute stress and PTSD; somatic symptom disorders involve distressing bodily complaints not fully explained medically.
- Dissociative disorders disrupt memory or identity; mood disorders include depressive and bipolar disorders; schizophrenia spectrum disorders involve positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, disorganisation) and negative symptoms (flat affect, avolition).
- Personality disorders are enduring inflexible patterns causing impairment; eating and substance-related disorders are also classified.
Worked example
A student reports repeated intrusive thoughts of contamination and washes hands until they bleed. The key reasoning is not the washing alone but the obsession-compulsion cycle: the thought triggers anxiety, the ritual briefly reduces it, and negative reinforcement strengthens the ritual. This pattern fits OCD better than generalised anxiety because the anxiety is tied to specific intrusive thoughts and repetitive acts. Diagnosis still requires duration, impairment and clinical judgement.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling ordinary sadness a depressive disorder without duration and impairment.
- Believing OCD means being tidy; the core is distressing obsession and compulsion.
- Repeating the myth that schizophrenia means split personality.
- Ignoring cultural context or confusing negative symptoms with rudeness.