Chapter 14: Critical psychological ideas and practices
1. What was Kraepelin’s name for what became to be called schizophrenia? And what does this literally mean?
Answer: Dementia praecox - senility of the young
2. What organisation is responsible for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual series?
Answer: American Psychiatric Association
3. What does a polygenic explanation for the hereditability of psychiatric disorders mean?
Answer: A very large number of genes each confer a tiny increase in risk
4. Make a list of social factors now known to be important in the causation of mental disorder.
Answer: Trauma, major life events, poverty and social deprivation (especially if experienced in childhood), migration and belonging to an ethnic minority (particularly if living in a neighbourhood with a low number of people from the same ethnic minority), living in an urban environment (especially in childhood), and personal adversities such as early separation from parents, bullying at school, neglect, and sexual or physical abuse
5. When is it justified not to offer psychological intervention.
Answer: People who do not express they are distressed
6. Why have researchers developed a focus on factors that successful therapies have in common?
Answer: Despite evidence that psychotherapies work, it is difficult to state clearly which work best or predict which people or which aspects of their experiences will be helped by different approaches
7. Which specific therapy was inspired by the Maastricht Approach to supporting people who hear voices?
