Unit 5 · Mental and Physical Health

Unit 5 asks three questions students habitually merge: what a psychological disorder looks like, why it developed, and what demonstrably helps. Each has its own vocabulary and evidence, and the scenarios punish answers that borrow from the wrong one.

By the end of this page you can classify by symptom pattern, explain by the interaction of vulnerability and stress, and match treatments to mechanisms and evidence — without letting the three bleed together.

The decision that organizes this unit

Pattern, interaction, evidence — in that order

Identification, explanation, and treatment each own a vocabulary; mixing them is the unit's signature error.

Mechanism route and repair branches

Step 1 · Weigh the three identification factors separately

Not working (dysfunction), feeling bad (distress), and standing outside cultural norms (deviation) are three separate considerations. A vignette can carry any one without the others.

• Diagnostic cue: Someone distressed by grief is scored as 'dysfunction,' or an unusual but harmless routine as 'distress.'
• Wrong branch: The three identification factors are answered with each other because all three sound like 'something is wrong.'
• Repair: Test each on its own terms — functioning impaired? person suffering? outside cultural expectations? — and name only the factor the vignette shows.

Step 2 · Track stress as a sequence, not a moment

The general adaptation syndrome runs alarm, then resistance above baseline, then exhaustion below it — illness risk concentrating late. Coping is classified by target: the problem or the feeling.

• Diagnostic cue: A caregiver's months of coping followed by collapse is described as one long alarm reaction.
• Wrong branch: A three-stage sequence is flattened into a single episode, erasing the resistance plateau that explains the delayed cost.
• Repair: Restore the timeline: alarm mobilizes briefly, resistance holds above baseline while resources drain, exhaustion arrives late — where the illness risk belongs.

Step 3 · Require both the vulnerability and the trigger

The diathesis-stress account expects a disorder only when predisposition and accumulated stress meet. Vulnerability alone sits below threshold; the same stress lands on different constitutions differently.

Step 4 · Match the disorder to its defining pattern

The exam draws from Topic 5.4's closed list. Identify by the defining pattern, its timing, and what any fear attaches to — checking for elevated periods before assigning any mood category.

• Diagnostic cue: Weeks of low mood are assigned a depressive category without any question about elevated periods.
• Wrong branch: A mood category is chosen from the visible low without checking for alternating highs that would change the family.
• Repair: Ask the elevation question first: low mood alone and low mood alternating with manic periods are different categories. The check costs a sentence; skipping it costs the item.

Step 5 · Trace each treatment to mechanism and evidence

Psychotherapies work through structured conversation — restructuring thoughts, approaching feared cues, reinforcing behavior, reflecting the client's frame — while biological interventions act on signaling chemistry or tissue. Evidence and the alliance govern both.

Representation lab: the mechanism on the page

The three-stage stress sequence on one time axis

The general adaptation syndrome is a sequence, and the graph keeps its order honest. At the stressor's onset the body's resistance briefly drops — the alarm stage. If the stressor continues, resistance climbs above the dashed baseline and holds there: the resistance stage, in which the person copes while the body spends resources faster than it restores them. Only when that spending runs long does the curve fall below baseline into exhaustion, and this is where the marked illness risk belongs — wear accumulates at the end of the sequence, not at the dramatic-feeling alarm. Two boundaries: the curve describes a continuing stressor, not a single scare, and it is a physiological timecourse, not a diagnosis — feeling worn down is not itself a disorder.

Predisposition times stress, not predisposition alone

Each line tracks one person's risk of developing a disorder as life stress accumulates. Both lines rise — stress matters for everyone — but the line for the higher inherited or acquired predisposition rises far more steeply. The marked stress level is the reading that matters: at the same amount of stress, one person's risk is several times the other's. That is the diathesis-stress logic; it repairs two opposite overreaches. Vulnerability alone is not the disorder: at the far left, even the high-predisposition line sits low, because the trigger has not arrived. And stress alone is not the disorder either: at the far right the two lines remain far apart, because the same events land on different constitutions. A credit-bearing explanation names both factors and their interaction.