Q8 - The symptoms of mental disorders

[richromano]

Since Ques #8 isn't here, I thought I'd post just to verify.

P: Some patients with mental disorders result from chemical imbalances affecting the brain

-->

C: These patients can only be effectively treated with medication that will reduce or correct the imbalance

Q: The argument depends on assuming which?

Chose A: treatment by psychotherapy can produce no effective reduction in or correction of chemical imbalances that cause mental disorders.

[tommywallach]

Hey Rich,

You totally nailed it. Let's just finish with the POE:

Conclusion: These can only be treated with medication that affects the balances

Premise: Some patients with mental disorders have disorders that result from chemical imbalances

(A) CORRECT. The argument assumes that chemical imbalances can only be addressed with medication. We need to know that psychotherapy can't do the same thing.

(B) The argument does not depend on medication being faster, but on medication being the only effective option. Also, it's about a specific subset of patients with mental disorders (the ones with chemical imbalances), not all of them.

(C) The argument would hold whether there was only one such mental disorder. If there are any, we need to know if medication is the solution for them.

(D) makes one of the mistakes that (B) makes. This argument is about only mental disorders caused by chemical imbalances, not all mental disorders (the stimulus already told us that some mental disorders can be effectively treated with psychotherapy).

(E) Again, we already know "Some patients with mental disorders can be effectively treated with psychotherapy," so this directly contradicts the passage.

Hope that helps!

-t

[richromano]

Thanks Tommy!

[uhdang]

Hi, I have a question about the CORE of this passage.

Taking a quick look and considering a conclusion indicator “thus” and transitional word “but”, I can figure that the premise would be “Chemical imbalance affecting brains could result in mental disorders for some people“ and the conclusion would be “They can only be effectively treated with medication.” (Just as stated above)

But since “psychotherapy” from Background Information provides a potential “hole” for necessary assumption, I was wondering if we should include the part about psychotherapy in CORE as well. So, it would look like this:

Usually psychotherapy is used to treat mental disorder + Chemical imbalance causes mental disorders for some patients —> Using medication dealing with imbalance can only effectively treat those patients.

I guess I’m not clear on distinction between background information and premise yet, so please help me out.

[rinagoldfield]

Thanks uhdang !

I think your initial instinct was right. When identifying the core, start with the conclusion, which you correctly note is “these patients can be effectively treated only with medication.” Then ask yourself, why does the author think this? What is his or her evidence? In this case, the author's main "evidence" is the chemical imbalance stuff.

The other information is certainly relevant, but it is not the author's primary evidence. As a result, it is background.

Best,
Rina

[783874728]

I guess I misread the "only" as "merely", so I guess if it means "merely" then E is right? I wonder if someone can point out if I'm wrong

[burqin]

Since Ques #8 isn't here, I thought I'd post just to verify.

P: Some patients with mental disorders result from chemical imbalances affecting the brain

-->

C: These patients can only be effectively treated with medication that will reduce or correct the imbalance

Q: The argument depends on assuming which?

Chose A: treatment by psychotherapy can produce no effective reduction in or correction of chemical imbalances that cause mental disorders.

I was stuck here for several minutes until I tick A. I was thinking "what if psychotherapy is a sort of medication?"

[tommywallach]

Medication is, by definition, a substance.

-t