Daniel’s behavior would be considered abnormal behavior according to the book. Abnormal psychology or psychopathology is defined as “the study of disorders of mind, mood, and behavior” (Baird 264). It is very had to define a psychological disorder because the way that people may view the behavior. For example one person could see the behavior as a symptom while another person sees it as “creative eccentricity” (Baird 264). The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders is responsible for the classification of psychological disorders. “It defines a mental disorder as a disturbance in a person’s emotions, drives, thought processes, or behavior that: involves serious, prolonged distress; impairs the
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Some studies have shown that some people are “genetically predisposed to mood disorders” meaning “the risks of major depression and bipolar disorder increase if you have a depressed parent or sibling” (Baird 272). Women are especially susceptible to major depression, but this is not yet fully understand as to why this happens by psychologists at this time. Someone from a biological/medical perspective might explain David’s behavior by referring to the depressed brain where links have been found between depression and the chemicals in our brains. They look to treat this by antidepressant medications such as serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors that “increase the levels of these neurotransmitters by inhibiting their reabsorption into cells in the brain” (Baird 272). These antidepressants however, will not show behavioral changes in patients for at least two weeks. Although medication can help aid someone who needs to increase the levels of specific neurotransmitters, some patients do not have low levels of these neurotransmitters meaning there is more to depression than just chemical imbalances in the …show more content…
Psychologist Aaron Beck made the revelation that depressed clients seemed to “distort their perceptions of experiences” making “mountains out of molehills” and anticipating future events to turn out badly by overgeneralizing, making one negative event into a never-ending cycle of bad events. Attributional-style questionnaires helped support Beck’s findings where researchers discovered “negative thinking is not merely a symptom of depression- a depressive cognitive style can trigger the disorder” (Baird 272). Someone studying the cognitive perspective may think that patients should be able to just “snap out of it” by thinking more positively, but the idea of learned helplessness – “the tendency to fail to attempt to escape a situation because of a history of repeated failures in the past” (Baird
Some studies have shown that some people are “genetically predisposed to mood disorders” meaning “the risks of major depression and bipolar disorder increase if you have a depressed parent or sibling” (Baird 272). Women are especially susceptible to major depression, but this is not yet fully understand as to why this happens by psychologists at this time. Someone from a biological/medical perspective might explain David’s behavior by referring to the depressed brain where links have been found between depression and the chemicals in our brains. They look to treat this by antidepressant medications such as serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors that “increase the levels of these neurotransmitters by inhibiting their reabsorption into cells in the brain” (Baird 272). These antidepressants however, will not show behavioral changes in patients for at least two weeks. Although medication can help aid someone who needs to increase the levels of specific neurotransmitters, some patients do not have low levels of these neurotransmitters meaning there is more to depression than just chemical imbalances in the …show more content…
Psychologist Aaron Beck made the revelation that depressed clients seemed to “distort their perceptions of experiences” making “mountains out of molehills” and anticipating future events to turn out badly by overgeneralizing, making one negative event into a never-ending cycle of bad events. Attributional-style questionnaires helped support Beck’s findings where researchers discovered “negative thinking is not merely a symptom of depression- a depressive cognitive style can trigger the disorder” (Baird 272). Someone studying the cognitive perspective may think that patients should be able to just “snap out of it” by thinking more positively, but the idea of learned helplessness – “the tendency to fail to attempt to escape a situation because of a history of repeated failures in the past” (Baird