The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
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PSYC30014 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
2024 STANDARD Assignment
Assignment Format: Argumentative Essay
Word limit: 2000 words
Submission deadline: 8am, Monday April 29th, 2024.
Special Note: PSYC30014 students should refer to the psychology student manuals provided
on Canvas to familiarise themselves with the precise details of policies and procedures
related to assignment excess word count penalties, late submission penalties, and extension
request procedures.
Essay Task
1. Discuss the following topic statement:
“DSM-5-TR anxiety disorders do not represent genuine states of mental illness”.
2. In discussing the topic statement, examine a minimum of 2 of the following issues:
a) The prevalence, reliability, and validity of an anxiety disorder diagnosis.
b) Overlap of anxiety with trait characteristics like neuroticism.
c) Treatment outcomes and efficacy for anxiety disorders.
d) Biomarkers and/or behavioural indicators of anxiety.
e) Contemporary models of psychopathology (e.g., HiTOP).
f) The intersection between culture and mental illness.
3. Your essay must additionally include discussion and logical recommendations regarding
useful future actions that could be taken in addressing the issues that you choose to
examine.
Advice on approaching this essay
Develop a contention
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 and the six issues that we have laid out for you to choose
from can each be discussed from multiple perspectives. In our experience, better essays in
response to these types of topics often don’t merely adopt a polarised position such as
“anxiety disorders are over-diagnosed responses to everyday circumstances and never
represent genuine states of mental illness” or “anxiety disorders by definition represent
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. Whatever your position, you can choose to talk about
anxiety disorders generally, or specifically as regards one or two disorders, or some
combination of this.
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).
Structure your essay appropriately
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 contention 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.
The importance of writing with integrity
Developing skills in proper paraphrasing and producing original work is a critical part of
learning how to write an essay in psychology. Avoiding plagiarism is an academic and
ethical imperative, and therefore, testing for plagiarism is an important part of the essay
marking process (see criterion E.1 below). We know, however, that students who study
PSYC300014 have varying degrees of knowledge and skills and avoiding this pitfall, knowing
how to test the originality of their work (even without Turnitin!), and understanding how to
write original work with confidence. To this end and to avoid the various academic
penalties that come with plagiarism, we recommend that you take advantage of the
following resources:
3. We will also be able to provide general advice around approaches to proper paraphrasing,
quoting, and citation, through practical class discussion and live-streamed Q&A consultation
during semester.
4. Do not use AI. The use of AI is considered by the University to constitute academic
misconduct. Formal academic penalty is a expectable outcome for the identified use of AI
or of plagiarism and Canvas and Turnitin have plagiarism and AI detectors. Aside from
avoiding negative outcomes, there are other reasons to avoid AI in your work. One is that AI
services consistently return incorrect information, false citations, and a commit a range of
other academic no-nos. The various errors to which I refer are commonly undetected by
non-experts (i.e. undergraduate students completing assignments) but are easily detectable
by topic and discipline experts (i.e. your markers). The most important reason not to use AI
in your academic work, however, is to avoid cheating yourself of the opportunity to grow.
Throughout your degree, you are learning new knowledges, new ways of thinking and
learning, and new skills, including writing. If you think about it, you are sacrificing, time,
effort, money, and more, to achieve this. Growth is to be found in the doing, so do yourself
a solid and ditch the AI for this essay.