AQA A2 Psychology PSYA3/PSYA4 Revision Thread 2016

Does anybody have an essay plan/ essay on diagnosis and classification of depression? I missed the beginning of the school year and I'm finding this difficult


Posted from TSR Mobile

yeah i have an a grade one.
Here are some points you can make:

1) different parts of the world use different classification systems. Europe use the icd, uk and usa use dcm - problems with cultural variations in diagnosis.

2) the dcm 3 was created in an attempt to improve reliability but whaley found low inter-rater reliability even with the use of this updated classification system, with a correlation of 0.11.

3)mojtab and nicholson - interpretation of key schizophrenic symptoms are unreliable. Correlation of only 0.4 when asking doctors to distinguish between "bizarre" and "non bizarre" delusions.

4) copeland - more evidence for cross cultural issues. Description of sz patient given to american as uk doctors. 62% of american diagnosed patient with sz compared to 2% of uk.

5) rosenhan - sent normal patients into a hospital complaining of delusions, but doctors didnt realise they were normal. Issues of labelling.

6) co-morbidity (ellason and ross) - people with did had more sz symptoms than those actually diagnosed with sz,

7) clear diagnosis should provide clear prognosis but outcomes for sz patients vary greatly.

8) ethnic minorities are disproportionately over diagnosed. May be their foreign culture is misinterpreted as abnormal.

9) correct diagnosis is important because early diagnosis has been shown to improve recovery.

5-6 is a lot isnt it? i've always used 4, isn't it basically the same as the psya3 exam? (this is for 20-24 markers)

It includes research studies and their evaluation. As we have longer to write the essays and don't need IDA's, points don't have to be as detailed as in PSYA3. I normally get around 20-24 in PSYA4 so it must be working 😆


Posted from TSR Mobile

oh fair enough! i'm struggling with them aha, do you have an essay you could send me so i can get an idea of how much to write and the structure and stuff? would be so helpful

Which one would you like to see?


Posted from TSR Mobile

do you have one for schizophrenia? any will do

I normally do 5/6 A02 points and yeah I think IDA's count if they are on a major issue with research but I wouldn't include more than 1 in each essay.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Sure, I'll PM you now


Posted from TSR Mobile

Pretty sure it was 51 last year?

Thank you!! Do you think I can get a good mark on it despite only starting now?

Please can someone help me, I am unsure how many explanations for each biological and psychological explanations I need to know!

For Bio explanations can I just know about Genetics and The Dopamine Hypothesis and for Psych can I just know about Psychodynamic and Cognitive, or do I need to know about behavioural and socio-cultural also????

Just need to know two explanations for each

They would say one or more or two
Doubt they would ask for 3 explanations xx

Lol its not about pussy its more of it would be abit weird for me to do a completely new topic when i was taught something else even though i barely remember anything from addiction... Really dont know what do.

Media is easy ngl

Thank you so very much for replying! x I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed by how much I need to start learning haha