Free practice final
Abnormal Psychology practice final (free, with answers)
A typical abnormal psychology final covers how abnormality is defined, the major models of psychopathology, assessment and diagnosis with the DSM-5-TR, and the main groups of disorders, from anxiety and trauma-related disorders to mood disorders, schizophrenia, and personality disorders, along with how they are treated. Most of these 15 questions use short case descriptions, so you practice telling similar diagnoses apart by their key features and time frames. Try each one on your own before opening the answer, and read the explanation even when you got it right.
For exam practice, not clinical advice.
Topics
- Defining Abnormality
- Models of Psychopathology
- Assessment and Diagnosis
- Anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
- Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders
- Depressive and Bipolar Disorders
- Schizophrenia Spectrum
- Personality Disorders
- Treatment
15 questions
Try each one before you open its answer.
1. Lena, a marathon runner, trains about four hours a day, far more than almost anyone in the population. She is healthy, happy, and doing well at work and in her relationships. Labeling her abnormal simply because her behavior is so uncommon would expose the main weakness of which way of defining abnormality?
- A Personal distress
- B Statistical rarity (deviation from the average)
- C Dysfunction that impairs daily life
- D Danger to self or others
Show answer
Answer: B. Statistical rarity (deviation from the average)
The statistical approach treats whatever is far from the average as abnormal, but rarity alone does not make something a disorder, since rare talents and dedication are uncommon too. That is why clinicians also weigh distress, impairment, and danger, and why the DSM-5-TR definition of a mental disorder centers on a clinically significant disturbance that is usually associated with distress or impairment.
2. Identical twins Ana and Bea both have a family history that suggests an inherited vulnerability to depression. In the same year, Ana loses her job and goes through a painful divorce, and she develops major depressive disorder. Bea, whose life stays stable, does not. Which model best accounts for the difference?
- A A purely biological (genetic) model
- B The psychodynamic model
- C The humanistic model
- D The diathesis-stress model
Show answer
Answer: D. The diathesis-stress model
The diathesis-stress model holds that a vulnerability (the diathesis), whether biological or psychological, raises risk, and that a disorder is most likely when that vulnerability meets significant stress. A purely genetic account cannot explain why two people with identical genes have different outcomes.
3. In Aaron Beck's cognitive model of depression, a person holds persistently negative views of themselves ("I'm worthless"), their world ("Nothing ever goes right"), and their future ("It will never get better"). What is this set of three negative views called?
Show answer
Answer: The cognitive triad (also called the negative triad)
Beck proposed that the cognitive triad, kept going by distorted thinking such as overgeneralizing from a single setback, helps maintain depression. Cognitive therapy teaches clients to notice these thoughts and test them against the evidence.
4. Two clinicians each watch the same video recordings of structured diagnostic interviews with 40 clients and assign a diagnosis without seeing each other's ratings. They agree on 37 of the 40 clients. This result is evidence of the diagnostic interview's:
- A Inter-rater reliability
- B Test-retest reliability
- C Predictive validity
- D Content validity
Show answer
Answer: A. Inter-rater reliability
Inter-rater reliability is how consistently different evaluators reach the same result with the same measure. Test-retest reliability would require assessing the same people at two different times, and agreement between raters cannot by itself show validity, that is, whether a diagnosis captures what it claims to or predicts later outcomes.
5. Luis has had several sudden surges of intense fear, with a pounding heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, and a feeling that he is dying. They peak within minutes and often come on with no clear trigger, and a medical workup found no physical cause. For the past two months he has worried constantly about having another attack and has stopped going to the gym in case exercise sets one off. Which diagnosis best fits?
- A Generalized anxiety disorder
- B Specific phobia
- C Panic disorder
- D Illness anxiety disorder
Show answer
Answer: C. Panic disorder
Panic disorder requires recurrent unexpected panic attacks, with at least one followed by a month or more of persistent worry about further attacks or a maladaptive change in behavior to avoid them. Generalized anxiety disorder involves ongoing worry about many everyday matters rather than discrete attacks, and in specific phobia the fear is triggered by a particular object or situation.
6. Rosa spends hours a day checking mirrors and comparing her nose with other people's, convinced it is badly misshapen, although others see nothing unusual about it. She has started skipping classes because of it. In DSM-5-TR, the disorder that best fits Rosa's symptoms belongs to which chapter?
- A Anxiety Disorders
- B Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders
- C Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders
- D Feeding and Eating Disorders
Show answer
Answer: B. Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders
Rosa's preoccupation with a perceived flaw, along with her repetitive checking and comparing, fits body dysmorphic disorder. DSM-5 grouped it with OCD, hoarding disorder, trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder), and excoriation (skin-picking) disorder in the Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders chapter, which DSM-5-TR keeps. Somatic symptom disorders center on physical symptoms or fear of illness, not appearance.
7. Three weeks after a serious car crash, Priya has intrusive memories of it, nightmares, an exaggerated startle response, trouble sleeping, and a sense of being in a daze, and she avoids driving. The symptoms began the day after the crash, are causing real problems at work, and are numerous enough to meet the symptom criteria for a trauma-related diagnosis. Which DSM-5-TR diagnosis fits at this point?
- A Posttraumatic stress disorder
- B Adjustment disorder
- C Generalized anxiety disorder
- D Acute stress disorder
Show answer
Answer: D. Acute stress disorder
Acute stress disorder applies when trauma symptoms last from 3 days to 1 month after the event. PTSD requires the symptoms to last more than 1 month, so if Priya's symptoms continue past that point, the diagnosis could change to PTSD.
8. Fourteen months after his wife died, Mr. Okafor still longs for her intensely nearly every day, feels as though part of himself died with her, and feels that life has lost its meaning. He has withdrawn from friends and is struggling at work, well beyond what is expected in his culture and religion. Which diagnosis, added in DSM-5-TR, might a clinician consider?
Show answer
Answer: Prolonged grief disorder
Prolonged grief disorder, placed in the Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders chapter, requires an intense, impairing grief reaction lasting at least 12 months after the death for adults (6 months for children and adolescents). Grief itself is normal, and the diagnosis is meant only for reactions that are unusually persistent and disabling for the person's cultural context.
9. Last year Marcus had a major depressive episode. Months later he had five days of unusually elevated mood, a reduced need for sleep, rapid speech, and a burst of new projects. Friends noticed the change, but it did not seriously impair his work, require hospitalization, or include psychotic symptoms, and he has never had a manic episode. Which diagnosis best fits?
- A Bipolar II disorder
- B Bipolar I disorder
- C Cyclothymic disorder
- D Major depressive disorder
Show answer
Answer: A. Bipolar II disorder
Bipolar II requires at least one hypomanic episode (at least 4 days of elevated or irritable mood and increased energy, noticeable to others but not severely impairing) and at least one major depressive episode, with no manic episode ever. A single manic episode would make it bipolar I, and cyclothymic disorder requires that full criteria for a hypomanic or major depressive episode have never been met. Major depressive disorder is ruled out once a hypomanic or manic episode has occurred.
10. For the past 10 days, Jenna has felt sad most of the day, lost interest in things she used to enjoy, slept poorly, felt exhausted, and struggled to concentrate, nearly every day. Under DSM-5-TR, what is the minimum length of time these symptoms must last to count as a major depressive episode?
Show answer
Answer: 2 weeks
A major depressive episode requires at least five of nine symptoms, including depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure, present nearly every day for at least 2 weeks and causing significant distress or impairment. Jenna has enough symptoms but not yet the duration, though what she is going through still deserves attention.
11. Alex developed delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech. Counting the early warning signs, the episode lasted about 3 months in total, and then he returned to his usual level of functioning. He had no major mood episodes, and substance use and medical causes were ruled out. Which diagnosis best fits?
- A Brief psychotic disorder
- B Schizoaffective disorder
- C Schizophreniform disorder
- D Schizophrenia
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Answer: C. Schizophreniform disorder
Schizophreniform disorder has the same core symptoms as schizophrenia but lasts at least 1 month and less than 6 months in total. Brief psychotic disorder lasts less than 1 month, schizophrenia requires continuous signs of disturbance for at least 6 months, and schizoaffective disorder requires a major mood episode alongside the psychotic symptoms.
12. A person with schizophrenia now sits for hours most days and rarely starts or follows through on everyday activities such as showering, cooking, or schoolwork. Which negative symptom does this describe?
Show answer
Answer: Avolition
Avolition is a marked drop in self-initiated, goal-directed activity. DSM-5-TR singles out avolition and diminished emotional expression as especially prominent negative symptoms in schizophrenia; others include alogia (reduced speech), anhedonia, and asociality.
13. Sam has few friends and turns down invitations, group projects, and even a promotion that would mean leading meetings. He says he would love to have close friends but is sure people will criticize or reject him, and he feels inadequate around others. The pattern has been present since his late teens. Which personality disorder best fits?
- A Schizoid personality disorder
- B Dependent personality disorder
- C Schizotypal personality disorder
- D Avoidant personality disorder
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Answer: D. Avoidant personality disorder
Avoidant personality disorder involves social inhibition driven by feelings of inadequacy and fear of criticism or rejection, even though the person wants relationships. In schizoid personality disorder, by contrast, the person shows little desire for close relationships at all, and in dependent personality disorder the core problem is an excessive need to be taken care of.
14. Dana has OCD centered on fears of contamination. Her therapist has her touch a public doorknob and then not wash her hands, staying with the discomfort instead of performing the ritual, and they repeat this with harder steps over many sessions. Which treatment is this?
- A Cognitive restructuring
- B Aversion therapy
- C Exposure and response prevention
- D Free association
Show answer
Answer: C. Exposure and response prevention
Exposure and response prevention combines facing the feared situation with blocking the compulsion, so the person learns that the dreaded outcome does not happen and that the anxiety can be tolerated without the ritual. It is a leading psychological treatment for OCD and is often combined with SSRI medication.
15. Which therapy, developed by Marsha Linehan, combines cognitive-behavioral skills training with acceptance and mindfulness strategies, and was first designed for people with borderline personality disorder and chronic suicidal behavior?
Show answer
Answer: Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
The "dialectic" in DBT is the balance between accepting oneself and working to change. Treatment typically pairs individual therapy with group training in mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness, and research supports its use for reducing self-harm.