Clinical Psychology | Edexcel A-Level Psychology (9PS0)

Clinical Psychology

442 questions
28 subtopics
Paper 2: clinical psychology, compulsory
Paper 2 and Paper 3

Compulsory on Paper 2.

It covers how mental disorder is diagnosed and classified, schizophrenia and one other disorder from anorexia, OCD and depression, their treatments, and the HCPC framework, case-study, interview and analytical methods clinical research uses.

Sample questions from Clinical Psychology

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Diagnosing mental disorders and the four Ds

How is dysfunction assessed when diagnosing a mental disorder?

Show the answer
By examining whether cognitive, emotional or behavioural patterns interfere with everyday functioning.
Explanations of schizophrenia

What is emotional over-involvement in expressed emotion?

Show the answer
Excessive concern, overprotection, or self-sacrifice by family members, which increases relapse rates in individuals with schizophrenia.
Treatments for schizophrenia and the second disorder

How do SSRIs treat depression?

Show the answer
They block the reuptake of serotonin at the synapse, increasing the amount of serotonin available to transmit signals, which gradually improves mood over several weeks. Examples include fluoxetine and sertraline.
HCPC guidelines for clinical practitioners

How do HCPC guidelines require clinical practitioners to handle confidentiality?

Show the answer
Practitioners must respect and protect confidential information, only disclosing it with consent or when required by law or in the public interest.
Choosing an inferential test

What type of data is Spearman's rho designed to analyse?

Show the answer
Ordinal (ranked) data, or interval/ratio data that has been converted to ranks.
Classic study: Rosenhan (1973)

What did Rosenhan find about depersonalisation and powerlessness in the hospitals?

Show the answer
Patients were treated as powerless and almost invisible; staff avoided eye contact, spent little time with them and sometimes discussed them or behaved inappropriately as though they were not present.
Contemporary study: Scott-Van Zeeland et al. (2013)

What does the EPHX2 gene do?

Show the answer
It encodes an enzyme involved in cholesterol and lipid metabolism.
Contemporary study: March et al. (2004) POTS

How did CBT alone compare with sertraline alone?

Show the answer
Both were better than placebo and did not differ significantly from each other.

The 28 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Diagnosing mental disorders and the four Ds	Recall questions on deviance, dysfunction, distress and danger, why statistical rarity and social deviance are not enough alone, why no single criterion suffices, and how classification systems operationalise the symptoms.	23
The DSM and ICD classification systems	Recall questions on what the DSM and ICD are, how they differ, and the reliability and validity of the diagnoses they produce.	29
Symptoms and features of schizophrenia	Recall questions on thought insertion, auditory hallucinations, paranoid and grandiose delusions and delusions of reference, derailment, word salad and poverty of speech, and how positive symptoms differ from negative ones.	9
Explanations of schizophrenia	Recall questions on the dopamine hypothesis and its drug evidence, twin concordance, enlarged ventricles and reduced prefrontal and temporal volume, expressed emotion, the cognitive and social causation explanations, glutamate dysfunction and double-bind theory.	18
Anorexia nervosa: symptoms and explanations	Recall questions on the core symptoms of anorexia nervosa, physical effects such as amenorrhoea, lanugo, bradycardia and hypotension, serotonin and genetic explanations, and social learning and cognitive explanations such as media influence, dichotomous thinking and perfectionism.	17
Obsessive-compulsive disorder: symptoms and explanations	Recall questions on obsessions, unwanted thoughts and harm doubts, washing, counting and mental-ritual compulsions and how negative reinforcement maintains them, the serotonin hypothesis, orbitofrontal and caudate abnormalities, and the cognitive-behavioural account of intrusive thoughts.	13
Unipolar depression: symptoms and explanations	Recall questions on the symptoms of unipolar depression from anhedonia, low mood and suicidal ideation to sleep, appetite and psychomotor changes, Beck's cognitive triad, the monoamine hypothesis, twin and genetic evidence, and learned helplessness.	25
Treatments for schizophrenia and the second disorder	Recall questions on typical and atypical antipsychotics, CBT for psychosis and family therapy for schizophrenia, SSRIs and CBT for depression, SSRIs and exposure and response prevention for OCD, and olanzapine, family-based therapy and CBT-E for anorexia, with the trial evidence for each.	29
Individual differences in clinical psychology	Recall questions on comorbidity, symptom overlap, gender differences in diagnosis, and the diathesis-stress model.	10
Developmental psychology in clinical psychology	Recall questions on genetic and biochemical explanations of schizophrenia, twin and adoption evidence, and the typical age of onset.	10
HCPC guidelines for clinical practitioners	Recall questions on the standards of conduct, performance and ethics, confidentiality, competence and fitness to practise.	30
Researching mental health	Recall questions on longitudinal, cross-sectional and cross-cultural designs, meta-analysis, and primary against secondary data.	28
Case studies in clinical psychology	Recall questions on what a case study yields, the Lavarenne et al. (2013) example, and the strengths and weaknesses of the method.	17
Interviews in clinical psychology	Recall questions on structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, Vallentine et al.'s (2010) interviews with detained offender patients, the strengths of interviews, social desirability bias, and the ethics of interviewing clinical populations.	9
Choosing an inferential test	Recall questions on when chi-squared, Spearman's rho, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the Mann-Whitney U test are used, the data and designs each requires, why non-parametric tests are chosen, and how the Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney U tests differ.	26
Descriptive statistics, levels of measurement and significance	Recall questions on descriptive and inferential statistics, measures of central tendency and dispersion, nominal, ordinal and interval or ratio data, comparing observed with critical values for each test, and how data type, design and hypothesis direction guide test choice.	17
Thematic analysis and grounded theory	Recall questions on the stages of thematic analysis from generating codes to naming themes, and on grounded theory: iterative collection and analysis, constant comparison, theoretical saturation, open, axial and selective coding, and how it differs from thematic analysis.	16
Classic study: Rosenhan (1973)	Recall questions on the eight pseudopatients, the single symptom reported, the length of admission, the follow-up study, and what it showed about labelling.	17
Contemporary study: Carlsson et al. (2000)	Recall questions on why the simple dopamine hypothesis was insufficient, the role of glutamate, and the therapeutic implications.	10
Contemporary study: Kroenke et al. (2008)	Recall questions on the PHQ-8, how it differs from the PHQ-9, the cut-off used, and its value in population surveys.	10
Contemporary study: Williams et al. (2013)	Recall questions on cognitive bias modification, why imagery was used, the randomised design, and the outcome.	10
Contemporary study: Scott-Van Zeeland et al. (2013)	Recall questions on the EPHX2 gene, the sequencing and replication method, and what it contributes to explaining anorexia.	9
Contemporary study: Guardia et al. (2012)	Recall questions on the aperture task, the dissociation between judging one's own body and another's, and the implications for body image.	10
Contemporary study: Masellis et al. (2003)	Recall questions on the effect of obsessions, compulsions and comorbid depression on quality of life in OCD.	10
Contemporary study: March et al. (2004) POTS	Recall questions on the four conditions, the 112 young people, sertraline, and why the combination performed best.	10
Key question in clinical psychology	Recall questions on mental health in the workplace as a key question, applying the four Ds, Rosenhan's labelling, explanations, treatments and cultural sensitivity to it, and on drugs against therapy for schizophrenia and stigma as further key questions.	10
Practical investigation in clinical psychology	Recall questions on content analysis of attitudes to mental health, summative analysis, coding units and categories, comparing two sources, inter-rater reliability and ethics, and why a student practical cannot use clinical participants.	10
Issues and debates in clinical psychology	Recall questions on ethics with vulnerable participants, reductionism, nature and nurture, cultural bias in diagnosis, and social sensitivity.	10

Clinical Psychology is 442 of the 2,738 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.