We explain what psychopathology and psychological disorders are. The biomedical perspective and examples of psychopathological disorders.
What is psychopathology?
Psychopathology is the discipline that analyzes the motivations and particularities of mental illnesses. This study can be carried out with several approaches or models, among which the biomedical, the psychodynamic, the socio-biological and the behavioral can be mentioned.
The word psychopathology can refer to:
- That area of health that describes and systematizes the changes that occur in the behavior of human beings and that cannot be explained through the maturation or development of the individual and that are known as psychological disorders.
- To the area of study of psychology that focuses on studying those unhealthy states of mind of individuals, as we have already mentioned.
From this it follows that any behavior that causes discomfort, some impairment or disability as a consequence of the deterioration of cognitive brain functions is plausible to be called psychopathology.
Psychopathology is a discipline that studies the abnormal, the deviant, the maladjusted, the disordered, the disorganized, etc ; whose interest focuses on the nature and causes of abnormal or psychopathological behavior and its main objective is to discover laws that regulate abnormal or pathological behavior through the scientific method.
The interest of psychopathology lies in the nature and causes of abnormal or psychopathological behavior. However, it is difficult to establish absolutely and with total precision what should be understood by abnormal or psychopathological behavior, which is why it is useful to know what the criteria or parameters are that will allow us to enter the field of abnormal or psychopathological behavior.
See also: Madness
Biomedical perspective of psychopathology
The biomedical perspective of psychopathology addresses the mental disorders like any other kind of disease considering that psychopathological alterations are generated by underlying biological abnormalities (genetic, biochemical or neurological). Therefore, treatment must be focused on correcting these organic root abnormalities.
In this sense, it can be said that abnormal behavior is a disease suffered by the pathological functioning of some part of the body. These diseases are related to alterations in the brain portion, which can be anatomical (the size or shape of certain brain regions are not within normal limits) or biochemical (when the biochemical elements that contribute to neuronal functioning have their function altered).
Psychopathology understands that mental disorders can be:
- Organic Those that have obvious physical causes, as occurs with Alzheimer's.
- Functional. They bring together abnormal behavioral patterns that do not offer concrete indications of organic alterations in the brain.
Examples of psychopathological disorders
In the case of psychopathological disorders that develop during infancy, childhood or adolescence of an individual, we can establish that there are several typologies among which are:
- Mental retardation.
- Communication disorders (phonological, stuttering, etc.)
- Pervasive developmental disorders.
- Learning disorders.
- Tic disorders.
- Ingestion and eating behavior disorders.
In the case of the developmental disorders These include those that assume that the individual in question suffers from incapacitation at different levels. Within this category, for example, the autistic disorder stands out, which begins in childhood and translates into a series of disabilities in the psychological and behavioral areas.
The five senses are affected by abnormalities in the autistic people who, in addition, are characterized by being quiet, barely laugh, have limitations in terms of language and communication, and at a physical level they have a series of deficiencies in lateralization.
Likewise, within the psychopathological developmental disorders, there is also what is known as Rett disorder, which occurs in the female gender and that resembles autism to some extent. Mental retardation as well as a condition in motor coordination are the two hallmarks of patients with this syndrome, which means that they have a severe disability in many ways.
Finally, it is interesting to highlight that the behavioral model of psychopathology does not make differences between pathological behaviors and normal behaviors, since both are the result of learning conditioned by the environment or environment. Therefore, great importance is given to environmental influences rather than biological or genetic ones. Treatment in this model revolves around modifying both overt and inferred behavior.
