Brain Disease

Final Paper: Brain Disease

At the beginning of this week, you were introduced to the idea of mental illness as a disease rather than a set of symptoms or behavior. Physiological psychology forms the basis for this paradigm shift. A better understanding of mental illness and its associated symptoms/behavior will result from the combination of both a psychological and biological model of study.

Assignment Instructions

For your final project, choose a mental illness to research from both a biological and a psychological standpoint. Look at causes of the mental illness (both biological and environmental), brain structures affected by the illness, hormonal differences in the nervous system, neural pathways affected, etc. You will also need to include a section on treatment options and the specific physiological effects of the chosen treatment method on the nervous system.

In conclusion of your assignment, include a paragraph on the importance of using a combination of physiology and psychology in understanding the illness you chose. What insight would be missing without one perspective or the other (physiology or psychology)?

You will need to include in-text citations from at least four different resources. Your assignment should also include an introduction, body and conclusion with a reference page listing the resources you cited. Include at least one paragraph for each of the following sections:

• Introduction: introduce the mental illness and its importance
• Body
• Biological view of the mental illness
• Psychological view of the mental illness
• Brain structures affected by the mental illness (including structures, locations, hormones, neural pathways, etc)
• Treatment options and physiological effects of treatment
• Conclusion: importance of using both physiology AND psychology to understand the mental illness
• Reference Page: four reference entries that correlate with in-text citations

Should you have any questions regarding this assignment, direct them to your course facilitator.

Format Requirements