PSYC30014: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

2500 word Essay (40%) and a 2 hour exam (60%) consisting of 12 extended answer Qs (each answer expected to be about 2-2.5 pages long) - but out of 12 Qs you have to choose and answer a total of 6 (3 Qs from Henry Jackson's lectures and 3 Qs from Amie Frewen/Isabel Krug's lectures).

This was my favourite uni psych subject to date! Basically, this subject is all about Abnormal Psychology! So you learn about a specific mental disorder every week (e.g. throughout the 12 weeks, we first covered the importance of DSM and Clinical techniques for studying Mental Disorders, and then we covered how to formulate case studies for patients with mental disorders. After that, we basically went straight into focusing on the actual mental disorders themselves. You only learn about the main key features and symptoms and controversies surrounding the disorders (the interesting stuff!) and we never had to learn anything about treatments (thank God!). So we learnt about Anxiety Disorders (stress,panic disorder, PTSD, social anxiety), Mood Disorders (Major Depressive Disorder & Bipolar), Substance Use Disorders, Somatoform & Dissociative Disorders, Eating Disorders, Sexual Disorders and Paraphilias, Psychosis (Schizophrenia), and Personality Disorders as well as major issues surrounding mental disorders (e.g. stigma, low awareness/treatment in Indigenous populations etc). Because you CHOOSE what Qs you want to answer in the exam, it is possible to only study 3 topics from HJ's lectures and 3 from AF's lectures - HOWEVER, I think it's better to try and study them all as often you could get a Q that you don't know how to answer and it's good to have knowledge to fall back on another Q Also, you're not required to particularly memorise DSM symptom criteria so dw about that!

The Essay was basically focused on whether incorporating a dimensional approach to the categorical DSM would be an adequate framework for diagnosing Eating Disorders. Unfortunately the Eating Disorders lecture by Isabel Krug was held weeks after our essay was due so basically we had to independently research on eating disorders ourselves for the essay (which wasn't a big deal but having a lecture would've helped more). The essay wasn't extremely difficult but researching and getting good sources took up the most time. Also, having mostly used APA referencing with lab reports, I had to again revise how to use APA in essays haha. The Essay was online submission and we did get assistance in terms of writing introductions and body paragraphs in our Lab Class. That said, the Lab classes were really great! I actually enjoyed the lab classes for this subject more so than any other of my psych subjects. Basically we went through the lab slides, did group discussions of case studies and watched videos of patients who had the particular mental disorders we were studying. My tutor was Elon and he was really helpful and engaging and made the lab classes interesting and enjoyable!

The Exam (for me) was wedged in between my Cognitive and Pers&Social Psych exams so naturally I was cramming for this subject to some extent haha. I found the exam okay! But finishing early is not really possible in this exam I think (unless you're a super speedy writer) and I thankfully got in my last word at the last second haha. For exam answers, there's no compulsion to memorise studies or statistical figures for prevalence of the mental disorders, but it is possible that they may get you marks (and enhance an already detailed answer). But obviously spurting out stats in itself doesn't take the place of an actual answer so they kind of emphasised that beforehand. Dot points or normal structured answers were both accepted. The answers had to be concise and no wasting time with fancy intros or repeating the Q. I found the Qs mostly did pertain to the lecture content and the answering booklet was enough to fit in all your answers
Overall, if you like the idea of learning about mental disorders and what factors cause/exacerbate/reduce/maintain them, this subject is for you! It's not a hard subject as such, but it is (like any psych subject) very content-based and the written extended Q exam means that it is important to get a good understanding of the aetiology of each disorder that's covered. The content in itself though is really interesting and nothing too abstract is covered so if you like the topics covered, I think you can definitely do well!

Yes, with screen capture.

Henry Jackson, Amie Frewen, Isabel Krug (Guest lectured for the Eating Disorders topic)

No past exams; however, 2 sample Questions were released along with a sample answer for each.

5 Out of 5

To be honest, any recently published Abnormal Psychology textbook will do (and this is what Henry Jackson also mentioned in the first lecture). However, the prescribed textbook for this subject is specifically Elizabeth Reiger's E. Rieger Abnormal Psychology: Leading Researcher Perspectives.(Second Edition) We didn't use it much so it's not essential to buy

2 hour lecture per week; 2 hour Lab Class every fortnight. Hurdle Requirement is to attend at least 5 out of 6 Lab Classes throughout the semester.

Semester 2, 2013

88 (H1)