PSYC30014 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Essay Task

1. Discuss the following topic statement: Anxiety disorders are not legitimate mental illnesses .
2. Your discussion of the topic statement should examine a minimum of 2 of the following issues:
   • The prevalence, reliability, and validity of an anxiety disorder diagnosis.
   • Overlap of anxiety with trait characteristics like neuroticism.
   • Treatment outcomes and efficacy for anxiety disorders.
   • Biomarkers and/or behavioural indicators of anxiety.
   • Contemporary models of psychopathology (e.g., Clinical Staging, HiTOP, RDoC).
   • The intersection between culture and mental illness (e.g., the effects of destigmatisation initiatives, shifting cultural concepts of mental health and illness states, cross-cultural variations in concepts of mental health and illness).
3. Your essay must additionally include discussion and logical recommendations regarding useful future directions in addressing the issues that you choose to examine.

Advice on approaching this essayM

In approaching this essay, you should develop a contention based on the literature that you research. This contention may be in overall support of the essay topic statement, or not. Your contention need not be polarised either way but may embody a more complex position based on consideration of points for and against the topic statement. Indeed, it is likely that your contention will comprise layers, such that: 1) an overall contention is presented based on consideration of all of the issues and evidence that you present throughout the essay; 2) your position regarding the topic statement as it pertains to each of the specific issues (see above) that you examine is also presented. Any overall position/positions on each issue examined you choose is fine, but your position must be based on evidence the evidence that you will discuss in the body of your essay. We strongly encourage you to take whatever position appeals to you the most based on your literature review and be clear about that position from the beginning. There are degrees of grey within the topic, so a good essay will likely not take a polarised position such as Anxiety disorders are over-diagnosed responses to everyday circumstances and not real mental disorders or Anxiety disorders are by definition mental illnesses end of story . Better essays are likely to explore the competing tensions and overlapping issues that are relevant to agreement or disagreement with the topic. For example, such a nuanced approach might look like any of the following overall positions:

• Some of the signs and symptoms that comprise anxiety disorders show significant overlap with experiences that many people have in everyday life.
• Some individuals presenting with anxiety may merely exhibit elevated levels of worry or other symptoms that do not surpass a diagnostic threshold.
• Understanding individuals in context is key in determining if their experiences of anxiety indicate a state of mental illness.
• There is likely to be a class of individuals whose everyday experiences have some overlap with and some independence from anxiety disorders.
• Destigmatisation campaigns have reframed anxiety as a normal and relatively benign circumstance, and therein, devalued and obfuscated the experience of clinically significant suffering.
• Some other nuanced position

The task for you is to work out your position for your whole paper. Be clear about your position from the beginning and use your essay to tease out, explore and support the position that you ultimately take (see above for examples).

Structurally, your essay should have an introduction, a body, and a concluding section. Following best writing practices, the introduction will contain your thesis statement (your main argument or position), the body will provide support for your thesis statement, and the conclusion will reiterate and summarise your thesis statement. Note, this does not mean that you should write the exact same thesis statement over and over again. Each paragraph should also follow this logical writing format and have its own objective within the context of the broader essay. In other words, each paragraph should be making a case for something and the sentences within that paragraph should be making that case and ultimately supporting your broader argument.

Given the size of the essay, your introduction may span more than one paragraph. The body of your essay should present arguments in support of and opposed to the topic statement and should have sections dedicated to each of core (again, see above) issues you examine. Discussion of the broad issues for consideration and the models you examine may occur within single paragraphs. In other words, you do not need to separately discuss issues and models. Instead, you should discuss issues and models together. Your concluding paragraph should summarise your essay, resolve the current state of the situation, and outline a logical future direction/s for addressing (or at least starting to address) the issues raised. There are of course, more than just these main points that you should build into your essay, and you should refer to the marking criteria presented below and essay writing resources available on the LMS for guidance here. Your first lab class will address the essay and you can also ask any questions you may have on the LMS discussion board.