Psychology Essay: Psychopathology Current Events Paper

Psychopathology
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February 15, 2021
Understanding the relationship between the psychopathology of certain neurological diseases and individuals' actions is essential for preventing and treating such diseases. This is because a thorough grasp of these cases' signs and symptoms would allow for a more proactive treatment of the patient, which could even prevent violent crimes related to it. Accordingly, the author of this article would like to focus on recent news related to the psychopathology of substance abuse. The news that would focus on this case is about a recent attempt of a man stabbing police officers during their confrontation with them in Queens, New York. The subsequent sections of this study would include a description of the news, a description of the disorder, and a synthesis between them. All in all, the author believes that this case is indeed brought about by the perpetrator's substance abuse.
Attempted Stabbing of Police Officers
As stated earlier, the news at the focus in this article is about the attempted stabbing of police officers with a man whom they were talking to. The event happened at around 6:55 pm when the neighbors of the suspect called the police officers to his home at 64th St and 55th Avenue. Police reports have shown that this was not the first time the authorities were called in by the suspect's neighbors but was the third time, albeit it would be the first time to confirm the reports. Nonetheless, during the confrontation, the police officers said that they found the man in his basement with another family member, and when he was asked to come with them so that he could be brought back to the hospital, the suspect pulled out a knife and lunged at them. Because of this action, the police officers shot him twice, leaving him in a critical condition.
Substance Abuse
Substance abuse disorders refer to a kind of psychological illness brought about by the excessive use of substances that could elicit a variety of effects on the human brain. According to Nikolas, Markon, and Tranel (2016), substance use encompasses various substances, whether organic or synthetic, that have different neurobiological mechanisms of action towards the brain. Nonetheless, the authors have noted that despite the variety of neural substrates that cause these actions, most of these drugs utilize common pathways, making it possible to diagnose and treat these illnesses quickly. For example, in most cases, the authors noted that those who are suffering from drug abuse are found to have used substances that primarily "focus on dopaminergic pathways, especially the mesolimbic and mesocortical dopamine systems." This suggests that substance abuse is related to common parts of the brain that is responsible for "reward processing," as well as those that are positively related to "reinforcement learning, attention, and habit formation," among others CITATION Nik16 \l 1033 (Nikolas, Markon, & Tranel, 2016). In another study done by Klugah‐Brown et al. (2020), the authors similarly found that these substances (i.e., cocaine) could induce substance-specific behavioral alterations due to changes in the frontal and limbic regions. However, certain substances might al...