Description

Abnormal Psychology Final Assessment

This final assessment is worth 40% of your final mark and is intended to be a useful portfolio for you to transfer to real life settings (personal or professional).  This assessment will provide you with an opportunity to:

·         Address an identified audience (mental health clients).

·         Personalize the task (make the information, examples and information you provide useful for the clients).

·         Provide an explanation on your own, not simply recall; to link specific facts with larger ideas, in this case, STRESS.

·         Effectively use and adapt what you know and research in diverse and real contexts.

·         Rework the information you research.

·         Transfer the information you research into client friendly and useful information regarding the topic (stress) and not a textbook version of the information.

·         Create an interactive learning tool for use in teaching your identified “clients”

This assignment relates to the following Course Learning Requirements:

CLR 1: Examine and discuss issues and values around abnormal behaviours and mental illnesses

CLR 2: Discuss classification (DSM-IV and DSM-5), assessment and treatment of certain mental illnesses.

CLR 3: Examine the historical context of abnormal psychology, paying specific attention to ethical considerations in the assessment and treatment of the mentally ill.

CLR 4: Examine and discuss the nature, typical symptoms and associated features of specific disorders.

Format:

·         Title page including title and student name

·         To facilitate client use, provide a table of contents

·         Bibliography - Document all resources used (as this is a research assessment, materials other than the required text will be used).

·         Minimum 7 pages of material  (title page, table of contents and bibliography not included in 7 pages)

·         # the pages

·         This compendium of information/interactive learning tool is designed for client use.  Please label all information and provide an Introduction and  Conclusion

·         Provide information in full sentences

·         Clearly label and distinguish between the 6 areas below

This is your creation – come up with something that would stop you if you walked by it…it could be a brochure/pamphlet, a video, a power point presentation, a client booklet (essay type of document) etc.  A brochure, video and power point presentation would also include speaker notes…in other words here is what you would hand out but also include what you would say to elaborate the info in these tools.

Because of the variety of creations, the font size and double spacing is left up to your creative eye…truthfully, there is SO much info out there that you will be hard pressed as to what not to include.  The text offers a few thoughts about stressors however this is very much a research project and ultimately, while it is geared for your “hypothetical” client base…my hope is that it will benefit all of you as well.  I know school is stressful, so is work, so is home (sometimes), so is life…and sometimes more than others…my hope is that this will help keep YOU safe.

How do you define stress?  Is stress something in the environment?  Is it a physiological or psychological reaction that occurs within a person?  Most psychologists define stress as the physiological and psychological response to a condition that threatens or challenges the individual and requires some form of adaptation or adjustment.   While stress is a psychological state, it can significantly increase one’s risk of developing serious illnesses.  The prognosis is even worse when people’s feelings of stress are combined with unhealthy behaviours, such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption or lack of sleep.  Unfortunately, as we become more stressed, we may use some of these unhealthy behaviours as stress relievers or we may attempt to reduce stress by staying up late and waking up early to get things done.  In situations such as these, our behaviours and our mental states work synergistically to drag us into an unhealthy cycle.

As a mental health specialist, you have been asked to develop an Intervention Action Plan for client information and distribution.  You are expected to research this information using sources other than your text (although your text may prove to be a useful starting point). In this research compendium/portfolio you will include the following sections:

1          Stress:  This section can introduce the concept of stress.  Define and discuss the following professional terminology that might better client understanding: Health psychology; Stress; Stressors; Acute stress; Chronic Stress; Environmental psychology; Eustress, and; Distress

2          The Stress Response System:  We all perceive stressors differently and each of us has our own strategies for coping with stress.  Having said this, we all have very similar immediate psychological responses to stress.  In this section, please include client-friendly information on the Fight or Flight Response, the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) and any Alternative Stress Responses that you might discover.