Behavioral Model Of Abnormality Analysis

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Behavioral Model of Abnormality
Behavioral Model of Abnormality One of the models that can be used to describe abnormality is the behavioral model. This model defines behavior as an individual’s response to the environment, or to a specific event or stimulus, according to Comer (2016). Many behaviors that we exhibit, whether good or bad, are learned through our experiences. These learned behaviors can be either internal or external, and are often developed through processes such as classical or operant conditioning, (Comer, 2016). These concepts were largely developed by famous behaviorists such as Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner.
Classical Conditioning One of the most prominent kinds of associative learning …show more content…
For example, a student who witnessed a school shooting may exhibit the typical signs of PTSD following the deaths of their fellow classmates. A behaviorist might explain these symptoms in the context of classical conditioning, describing the stimulus and responses of students. To elaborate, a student might have intruding thoughts, and could be re-experiencing the traumatic event in their mind. This could lead to student to avoiding the school where the shooting happened, or even developing a fear of going back. A behaviorist might say that the school used to be the neutral stimulus, that originally did not cause students to react negatively. Then, the school shooting which is the unconditioned stimulus, would naturally elicit the unconditioned response of fear. By the end of this horrendous incident, students may have made an association between the school, now the conditioned stimulus, and the response of fear to the location, as the conditioned response. By making this pairing, students may develop elevated levels of anxiety, depression or paranoia when going back to school. The behaviorist may go on to explain the causes of PTSD terms of operant conditioning. For example, the shooting may be seen as a “punishment” for the action of going to school, which may decrease a student’s future behavior of going to school. Although these are very blunt, cause and effect explanations for the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, these are some of the most likely ways a behaviorist would explain the causes of an anxiety disorder such as PTSD, focusing on how these associations were made or
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