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The Principles Of Psychology Within A Mental Health Setting

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Clinical psychology is a branch of the psychology discipline that is concerned with applying the principles of psychology within a mental health setting. The aims of clinical psychology are to promote both emotional and physical health and to help individuals attain an acceptable quality of life (Plante, 2011). To achieve this, it is of high importance to continually conduct new research into areas which help expand our knowledge of diagnoses, symptoms and treatment in order to create and revise theories for different debilitating conditions. Research can be conducted for both academic and applied purposes, with two aims: to investigate efficacy (ability for beneficial change) or to investigate effectiveness (how well a treatment works in …show more content…

However, this is now a slightly outdated view; it has been recognized that to dismiss qualitative methodology completely is to neglect a valuable tool. To assess the contribution of both quantitative and qualitative research within clinical psychology I will focus on the issue of Bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a crippling condition which is reported to affect around two percent of the population of the United Kingdom (Merikangas, Akiskal, Agnst, Greenberg, Hirschfield, Petukhova & Kessler, 2007). Bipolar disorder is characterised as the incessant occurrence of phases of depression, mania and affective state (Goodwin and Jamison, 2007). I aim to study how both types of research have helped contribute towards a better understanding of the condition and provided new light into areas such as diagnoses and treatment, within clinical psychology.
Bipolar disorder has a number of potentially negative impacts on the lives of those with the condition, such as restlessness, depression and feelings of isolation (Goodwin and Jamison, 2007). Therefore in order for a healthcare professional to be able to recommend any sort of treatment, it is of paramount importance to understand the brain activity which causes the behaviour in the first place. Quantitative research methodology such as neuroimaging allows psychologists to research how bipolar disorder affects the function of different regions of the brain. It enables researchers to objectively measure brain activity between

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