Question

Psychological Disorders

Question: (a) Describe the three components of the biopsychosocial model.

(b) Consider someone with major depressive disorder (clinical depression). Give an example of a possible contributing factor for each of the three components of the model. Be sure to explain how each of your three examples might contribute to the depression according to the model.

(c) People with psychological disorders often face a stigma about their disorder. Choose one of your examples from part

(b) and explain how it might be exacerbated by the stigma that often surrounds psychological disorders.

Answer 1

a. The tree models of biopsychosocial are biology, psychology and sociology. Here 'bio' refers to the biological factors like health, brain, genetics etc. on health. 'Psycho' suggests the psychological factors like mind, emotion, stress, perception etc and their influence on health and our daily life. 'Social' refers to the sociological matters like social interaction, economic status, environmental factors etc that influence health and daily life.

b. To a depressive person, the psychological assessment is done. By diagnostic test the biological disorder, if any, is found. Then with the help of social assessment his social behavior is evaluated. The treatment is done on such evaluation. The person is advised to do more social interactions. With the help of cognitive therapy his level of perception is increased. If the problem is chronic, then medication is used for improving biological issues.

c. A person with hearing problem is called by some men as 'deaf'. Person with mental disorder is called 'mad'.

d. Stigma is psychologically painful. The person feels inferior. He is depressed. He feels shy in doing social interaction. It intensifies his disorder.