Mental Wellbeing
Glen lost his job just after his third child was born. Glen felt overwhelmed by the demands of being a parent while also being unemployed. The park near his house closed and Glen really missed the opportunities that the park provided to spend time with his children and other fathers. However Glen had strong support from his family and friends. He also actively looked for new employment opportunities.
Glens' situation is an example of how mental health can fluctuate
A) Depending on internal and external factors
B) When external factors outweigh internal factors
C) Depending on internal rather than external factors
D) Depending on external rather than internal factors
A) Depending on internal and external factors
Define cultural continuity
Involves the preservation of all things to do with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ culture over time, and the sense of history, identity and belonging this provides.
What is meant by a specific phobia (define)
type of diagnosed anxiety disorder that is categorized by excessive and disproportionate fear when encountering or anticipating the encounter of a particular stimulus. Always maladaptive and distressed only.
What is the role of GABA in the development of specific phobia?
GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that calms neural activity. GABA dysfunction (low GABA levels) can lead to heightened anxiety because the brain’s fear response becomes overactive.
What is the role of benzodiazepines in treating specific phobia?
Benzodiazepines are short-acting anti-anxiety medications that act as GABA agonists, enhancing GABA’s inhibitory effects on the central nervous system to reduce physiological arousal and anxiety symptoms.
What does mental wellbeing refer to?
One’s current state of mind including their ability to think, process information, and regulate emotions.
Define self-determination
refers to the right to freely determine or control their political status and freely pursue their cultural, social and economic development.
What are internal and external factors and give an example of how they can influence where someone sits on the mental wellbeing continuum?
External: arise from one’s environment e.g relationships, work or school environment, social support, cultural expectations, life events
Internal: arise from within the individual e.g genetics, personality, thought patterns, coping skills
Explain how long-term potentiation (LTP) contributes to the persistence of a specific phobia.
LTP strengthens the neural pathways associated with the fear response each time the phobic stimulus is encountered or imagined. This reinforcement makes the fear response automatic and resistant to extinction, maintaining the phobia.
Explain how breathing retraining helps manage phobic anxiety.
Breathing retraining teaches individuals to use slow, controlled breathing to correct hyperventilation, reduce physiological arousal, and restore balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, helping calm the body’s stress response during exposure to a phobic stimulus.
Why is mental wellbeing considered a multidimensional concept, and how does this affect how psychologists measure it?
It involves emotional, social, and psychological aspects that interact with each other.
What does it mean when SEWB is described as a “holistic” framework for wellbeing?
It recognises that wellbeing comes from the balance and connection between multiple domains of life including the body, mind, emotions, family, community, culture, country, and spirituality rather than focusing on mental health alone.
Holistic: reflects an approach to wellbeing that considers the whole person, including their mental, physical, spiritual, and social needs.
Explain how the interaction between internal and external factors can increase the likelihood of developing an anxiety disorder.
An individual with a genetic predisposition (internal) and high environmental stress (external) such as trauma or social pressure may have an amplified anxiety response. The ongoing interaction between these factors can push them further down the continuum toward a clinical disorder.
Analyse how stigma surrounding mental illness can perpetuate a specific phobia once it has developed.
Stigma can lead individuals to avoid seeking help out of fear of being judged or labelled as weak. This delays treatment such as CBT or exposure therapy, allowing avoidance behaviours to continue and reinforcing the phobic response. The social barrier therefore contributes to maintenance, not just the onset, of the disorder.
Which one of the following intervention types and examples could be used to reduce Henry’s phobia of rocks?
A) Intervention type: psychoeducation. Example: Henry’s family sends him to a psychologist
B) Intervention type: Systematic desensitization. Example: Using a fear hierarchy, Henry is taught to relax near a bridge and move closer when he relaxes, until he can walk under it
C) Intervention type: CBT. Example: Henry is taught to correct faulty patterns of thinking about rocks to be able to hold one without fear
D) Breathing retraining. Example: Henry is taught a series of steps to remain calm while discussing rocks, having a rock in the room and finally holding a rock
C) Intervention type: CBT. Example: Henry is taught to correct faulty patterns of thinking about rocks to be able to hold one without fear
A student fails a test but studies harder for the next one instead of giving up. What is this an example of and define it in the context of mental wellbeing?
Resilience - the ability to cope with and manage change and uncertainty
An Aboriginal person living away from their traditional land reports feeling “disconnected” despite having supportive friends and family.
Using the SEWB framework, explain one possible reason for this feeling.
Connection to Country and land, or connection to spirit, spirituality and ancestors
Being separated from land, culture, or sacred places may disrupt spiritual well-being and cause feelings of imbalance or loss.
Distinguish between stress and anxiety
Stress is a psychological and physiological experience that occurs when an individual encounters something of significance that demands their attention and/or efforts to cope. Maladaptive when persistent + impairs functioning whereas anxiety is a psychological response that involves feelings of worry and apprehension about a perceived threat. Future oriented, only distress.
A child is bitten by a dog and later develops a phobia of all dogs. Identify the precipitation and perpetuation processes that explain this phobia.
Precipitation (Classical conditioning): The dog bite (unconditioned stimulus) is paired with the sight of dogs (neutral stimulus), leading to fear of dogs (conditioned response).
Perpetuation (Operant conditioning): Avoiding dogs reduces fear (negative reinforcement), maintaining the phobia.
A person with arachnophobia (phobia of spiders) participates in therapy where they first discuss irrational thoughts about spiders, then are gradually exposed to spider images, videos, and eventually live spiders. Identify and explain the two psychological interventions being used.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Psychotherapy encourages people to switch their dysfunctional thoughts and behaviours, with more adaptive ones. Challenges irrational or catastrophic thoughts (“Spiders will attack me”).
Systematic Desensitisation: Gradual exposure to the phobic stimulus paired with relaxation techniques to extinguish the conditioned fear response.
Give 2 examples of both high levels of functioning and low levels of functioning
High levels of functioning
- carry out basic everyday tasks
- productive in completing tasks
- be independent
- adapt to changes in environment
Low levels of functioning
- struggle to carry out basic everyday tasks
- feeling uncharacteristically lethargic or tired thus resulting in being unproductive
- lack direction or be able to set goals in life
- unable to cope with changes in environment
How does the SEWB framework differ from Western models of mental health, and why is this difference important in psychology?
Western models often emphasise the individual and focus on diagnosing and treating mental illness. The SEWB framework sees wellbeing as collective and interconnected, including family, community, and spiritual dimensions. This is important because it encourages culturally appropriate support and recognises how community and identity influence health outcomes.
Evaluate the strengths and limitations of using the mental wellbeing continuum model to understand mental health disorders like phobias.
Strengths:
Captures fluctuations in wellbeing and recognises recovery as a gradual process.
Reduces stigma by showing that everyone experiences movement along the continuum.
Encourages preventive interventions before disorder onset.
Limitations:
The model is subjective — difficult to precisely measure position or change.
It may oversimplify clinical disorders, which often involve biological abnormalities, not just gradual change.
Doesn’t always account for sudden onset of disorders triggered by trauma.
Analyse how memory bias and catastrophic thinking interact to maintain specific phobias.
Memory bias causes individuals to recall fearful experiences more vividly or inaccurately, exaggerating danger. Catastrophic thinking amplifies this fear by assuming worst-case outcomes (e.g., “If I see a spider, I’ll die”). Together, they reinforce avoidance behaviours and prevent exposure that could disconfirm the fear.
Analyse how psychoeducation for families and supporters can help reduce avoidance behaviours that maintain specific phobia.
Psychoeducation teaches families to avoid reinforcing avoidance (e.g., not comforting or removing the phobic stimulus) and to model calm behaviour. It also helps them challenge the individual’s unrealistic or anxious thoughts with factual information, creating a supportive environment that encourages gradual exposure and recovery.