MPCE-001

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Introducti on

Dr Manuel Joseph
Denahalaya, Punnapra
Alapuzha
 Mental health
• The World Health Organization (WHO) defines:
“...Mental health is a state of well-being in
which an individual realizes his or her own
abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of
life, can work productively and is able to make
a contribution to his or her community”
WHO, (2018) Strengthening mental health promotion.
Geneva, WHO.
 Psychopathology
• The study of the symptoms, causes, and treatments of
mental disorders.

• The study of Maladaptive behaviour/Adaptive failures

Most psychological disorders are simply extreme
expressions of otherwise normal emotions, behaviours,
and cognitive processes.
Ultimately, a society selects the general criteria for
defining abnormality and then uses those criteria to judge
particular cases.
 Mental Disorder
• DSM-5 describes a Mental Disorder as
a syndrome characterized by clinically
significant disturbance in an individual’s
cognition, emotion regulation, or
behavior that is deviant, distressful and
dysfunctional.
 Examples
• A man fails to see the world around in spite of intact
eyes.

• A woman believes that all people in the world can

see her nakedness whenever she removes her
clothes, even when inside closed doors.

• An unmarried pregnant woman feels terribly

guilty for not revealing it to her parents.
• CLINICAL ASSESSMENT
is the systematic evaluation and measurement of
psychological, biological, and social factors in an
individual presenting with a possible psychological
disorder.
• DIAGNOSIS
• is the process of determining whether the particular
problem afflicting the individual meets all criteria for
a psychological disorder, as set forth in the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5).
 Classification
• [Attempts to classify -- traced back to Ayurveda and
Plato]

• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders--American Psychiatric Association (2013).

• ICD-10 (1992)--WHO's classification -International

Classification of Diseases: Chapter 5.
 CAUSES (Etiology) of mental disorders
• Predisposing Factors
• (Predispose=to dispose beforehand; to give and inclination or
tendency to  beforehand; make susceptible).
• It determines an individual's susceptibility to Mental Illness. It will
interact with precipitating factors to result in Mental Illness. These
factors determine person's vulnerability to causes acting close to the
time of the illness.
• Precipitating Factors
• These are events that occur shortly before the onset of a disorder
and appear to have induced it. The type of disorder depends partly
on the constitutional factors of the patient.
• Perpetuating Factors
• These factors prolong the course of a disorder after it has been
provoked, e.g. Marital disharmony for alcoholism.
 Multiple causes

• Explanations of abnormal behavior must

consider biological, psychological, social, and
sociocultural elements.
 Multiple causes
• Biological factors
• involve genetics, brain anatomy and physiology,
central nervous system functioning, autonomic
nervous system reactivity etc.
• Psychological factors
• involve personality, cognition, emotions,
learning, coping skills, self-efficacy, values, and
the like.
 Multiple causes
• Social factors
• indicate family and other interpersonal
relationships, social support, belonging, love,
marital status, community connections, and so
forth.
• Sociocultural factors
• mainly refer to race, gender, sexual orientation,
spirituality or religion, socioeconomic status,
ethnicity, and culture.
Sue, D.,  Sue, D. W., et al., (2016) Understanding abnormal behavior. USA: Cengage Learning.
 Therapy
• Treatment for mental disorders is given in the form
of various kinds of therapy. Therapy consists of
procedures that aim to either cure sick people or
alleviate their suffering.

• In the mental health field there are two basic

categories of therapy: psychologically based
therapies and biologically based therapies.
 Biologically based therapies
recognize that the suffering individual often has a
genetic tendency toward a disorder, an imbalance in
neurotransmitters, a hormone problem, an
infection, or similar difficulties at a biological level.
Drug therapy is the most common form of biologically
based therapy. It is characterized by the prescription
of certain chemical agents that have been shown to
either eliminate or reduce the severity of symptoms
associated with various mental disorders.
 Psychotherapy
• Psychotherapy is the general term applied to any
kind of psychologically based therapy. The literal
meaning of the term psychotherapy is “healing of
the mind” or “healing of the self.”

• Psychologically based therapies begin with the

assumption that mental disorders are caused by
emotional conflicts, maladaptive learning, cognitive
errors, or similar behavioral processes.