cognitive approach to abnormality

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  • Created by: Amy
  • Created on: 31-12-12 10:52
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  • cognitive approach to abnormality
    • cause:faulty thinking
      • black and white thinking
        • everything is seen in a polarised manner so even a slight waiver from perfection is considered failure
      • overgeneralisation
        • when someone arrives at a sweeping conclusion based on a single trivial event
          • eg a person with depression may think everyone hates them because one person ignores them once
      • minimisation of success and maximisatoin of failure
        • eg a depressed person may focus on one B in their exams when they got 9 A's
      • faulty information processing
        • eg in eating disorders the patient may see themselves as overweight when they are actually very thin
    • evaluation
      • weaknesses
        • reductionist as social and biological factors are ignored
        • cause and effect
          • eg people argue rather than depression being caused by negative thinking, negative thinking is caused by depresson
      • strength
        • implications for treatments
          • challenge peoples thought processes
        • supporting evidence: anorexic patients
          • control group and anorexics given a soft drink and chocolate bar and asked to describe their change in body shape
            • control group saw no change
            • anorexics said they had put on a substantial amount of weight
    • treatments: cognitive behavioural therapy: REBT
      • evaluation
        • strengths
          • patients have an active role in their therapy
          • it is effective with 90% success rate after an average of 27 sessions
        • weaknesses
          • REBT is judgemental about peoples behaviour
          • some irrational beliefs more accurate than others
            • it is thought that depressed patients have a more accurate perception of reality than normal people
      • method
        • encourage people to dispute their irrational beliefs
        • logical disputing
          • does it make sense
        • empirical disputing
          • is there any evidence
        • pragmatic disputing
          • is it useful
  • eg in eating disorders the patient may see themselves as overweight when they are actually very thin

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