1. A2 Skills

2. Today’s Session You will be assessing yourselves on key skills needed in Psychology. You will be developing your skills of APPLICATION Context – Schizophrenia and Mood Disorders

3. Skills self-assessment Complete the self-assessment sheet, carefully considering the strength of your skills and whether you know how to improve.

4. APPLICATION The skill of applying your knowledge and understanding to an example is crucial for exam success. Fortunately, as with all skills, you can get better at it with practice.

5. Clinical Cases This task will help you to revise the explanations and treatments for Schizophrenia and mood disorders It will also strengthen your skills of critical analysis, your ability to work in a team, to develop an argument and your communication skills.

6. In groups of 3 – 4 read your patient’s case. The case will be either a patient with schizophrenia or a mood disorder (unipolar depression or bipolar disorder) Each of you will take the role of a psychologist, taking different approaches depending on the diagnosis.

7. Schizophrenia Biological Behaviourist Cognitive Sociocultural explanations: Labelling and family dysfunction.

8. Mood Disorders Biological Behaviourist Cognitive Psychodynamic

9. Your GROUP task: Give an EXPLANATION from each perspective for the patient’s problems. Evaluate and offer evidence. Describe a programme of TREATMENT for the patient for each approach. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the therapy and the probability of success (refer to evidence).

10. Discuss In your group, discuss the different approaches and decide on the best approach for this patient.

11. Presentations Prepare to present your cases to the class next lesson.

12. Reflect What skills have you developed in this lesson? Do you feel more confident using any of the key skills following today’s lesson? What do you need to do now?