Assignment Format: Argumentative Essay

Word limit: 2000 words

Submission deadline: 8am, Friday, April 28th, 2023.

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 anxiety disorders are not genuine states of mental ill-health”.

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., Clinical Staging, HiTOP, RDoC).

f)    The intersection between culture and mental illness (e.g., the effects of destigmatisation initiatives, shifting cultural concepts of mental health and illness states, cross-cultural variations in concepts of mental health and illness).

3. Your essay must additionally include discussion and logical recommendations regarding useful future directions 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, so a good essay will likely not simply adopt a polarised position such as “Anxiety disorders are over-diagnosed responses to everyday circumstances and not real mental disorders” or “Anxiety disorders are by definition 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:

1. Dr Groot has recorded a video on the topic of plagiarism and paraphrasing.  This video    gives practical advice and examples of what does and doesn’t constitute problematic work. You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/GHgAbD_FJY8.

2. The University of Melbourne provides a range of resources to help students understand potential pitfalls around poor paraphrasing and plagiarism, and to develop skills in writing with integrity.  You can access information, videos, and practical modules at the following link: https://academicintegrity.unimelb.edu.au/#academic-integrity

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.  In addition, the Academic Skills Unit provide support and advice, and you   can access their many useful writing resources here:

https://students.unimelb.edu.au/academic-skills

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 bin the AI for now.

Starting readings

The following readings are intended to provide you with a starting point from which to       approach this essay. These readings are not compulsory.  Instead, they are suggestions to help you get started and you are welcome to include these in your essay if you would like  to. These readings are available on the LMS via the “Readings Online” tab. We expect that you will go beyond these resources in your research for this essay.

• Conceptual Considerations of Psychiatric Disorders:

Kendler, K.S. (2016). The nature of psychiatric disorders. World Psychiatry, 15, 5- 12.

• DSM-5-TR and Anxiety Disorders

The following readings are available with UoM login.  When prompted select ‘login via institution’ and the University of Melbourne.

DSM-5-TR introduction

https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787.Introduction

DSM-5-TR Anxiety Disorders introduction.  After reading the introduction, you can review  criteria and more on each anxiety disorder using the ‘Sections’ button in the top-left of the screen. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787.x05_Anxiety_Disorders

• Anxiety Disorders in General:

Craske, Stein, Eley, Milad, Holmes, Rapee, & Wittchen (2017). Anxiety Disorders. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 3 (17024), 1-19.

Brown & Barlow (2009). A proposal for a dimensional classification system based on the       shared features of the DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorders: Implications for assessment and treatment. Psychological Assessment, 21, 256-271.

Stein et al. (2014). Anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, trauma- and stressor-related disorders, and dissociative disorders in DSM-5. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 611-613.

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder as a Specific Example:

Ruscio et al. (2017). Cross-sectional comparison of the epidemiology of DSM-5 Generalized Anxiety Disorder across the globe. JAMA Psychiatry, 74, 465-475.

• Overlap with Related Characteristics:

Cuijpers et al. (2010). Economic costs of neuroticism: A population-based study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67, 1086-1093.

Barlow et al. (2013). The nature, diagnosis, and treatment of neuroticism: Back to the future. Clinical Psychological Science, 2, 344-365.

• Cultural Considerations as regards the Conceptualisation of Mental Illness : Jackson, H. J., & Haslam, N. (2022). Ill-defined: Concepts of mental health and illness are becoming broader, looser, and more benign. Australasian Psychiatry.

https://doi.org/10.1177/10398562221077898

Psychology writing resources

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association forms the basis of APA      Style and provides guidelines for scholarly writing in psychology and related disciplines. You can access the manual through the library (http://go.unimelb.edu.au/a9qj). The companion  website (https://apastyle.apa.org/) summarises much of the manual’s contents and includes webinars, tutorials, and other resources that can help you with your writing.

The following texts provide general guidance on essay writing. They are also available through the library (https://library.unimelb.edu.au/).

Burton, L. J. (2021). An interactive approach to writing essays and research reports in

psychology (5th ed.). Wiley.

Dickerson, P. (2021). How to write brilliant psychology essays. Sage.

Mewburn, I., Firth, K., & Lehmann, S. (2021). Level up your essays: How to get better grades at university. NewSouth.

O’Shea, R. P., & McKenzie, W. A. (2021). Writing for psychology. (7th ed.). Cengage.

Assessment

The criteria that markers will use to evaluate your essay are presented below.  You should   also refer to these criteria in the planning and development of your essay.  Some additional interpretation of the main criteria domains is provided below the table.  Please refer to the PSYC30014 subject manual for details of the marking reliability process that will be                undertaken to ensure that your paper is accurately assessed.