AP Psychology, AP exams

Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health

Unit 5 covers stress and health psychology, the classification and explanation of psychological disorders, and their treatment. Disorders are approached through a biopsychosocial framework and current diagnostic categories rather than isolated symptom lists. Treatment includes psychotherapeutic approaches, biological interventions, and professional ethics.

Position: 5 of 5 units
Topics covered: 8 topics in this guide

What is covered

Topics inside this unit.

These topics describe the scope students most often review for this part of AP Psychology. Treat them as a study checklist rather than an exhaustive list of what a single exam form can sample.

Stress, coping, and health psychology: Stressors and stress responses, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and effects on physical health.
Positive psychology and well-being: Subjective well-being, resilience, gratitude, and the factors research links to sustained life satisfaction.
Explaining and classifying disorders: The biopsychosocial model, diathesis-stress framing, current diagnostic classification, and the risks of labeling.
Anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and trauma-related disorders: Diagnostic features and prevailing explanations for each category, including learned and biological components.
Depressive, bipolar, and schizophrenic spectrum disorders: Core symptoms, course, and biological and cognitive explanations for mood and psychotic disorders.
Other disorder categories: Dissociative, somatic, feeding and eating, personality, and neurodevelopmental disorders and their distinguishing features.
Treatment of psychological disorders: Psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, cognitive, and group therapies, plus drug therapies and other biomedical treatments.
Ethics in psychology: Informed consent, confidentiality, protection from harm, and ethical review in both research and clinical practice.

Study tips

How to practice Health.

Section-specific guidance that follows from how this material is usually tested.

Pair every disorder with one explanation and one treatment approach on a single card.
Use current diagnostic terminology; outdated labels can cost credit on free-response answers.
Write about disorders descriptively rather than diagnostically, which is also what the rubrics reward.

Where this fits

Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health is 5 of 5 units in the AP Psychology guide. Use the full guide to balance it against everything else you have to review.

Back to the AP Psychology guide Official exam information

Sample Health questions

Practice questions, not yet expert-reviewed

Original practice questions written to the published framework for this section. No expert has reviewed them, and they are not taken from any official exam. Try each one before you open the answer.

Question 1Foundational
Which framework explains psychological disorders as the joint product of biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences?
1. AThe biopsychosocial model
2. BThe psychodynamic model
3. CThe humanistic model
4. DThe behavioral model
Show answer
Answer: A. The biopsychosocial model
The biopsychosocial model is deliberately integrative, treating genetics, thought patterns, and cultural context as interacting contributors rather than rivals. The psychodynamic model is the tempting distractor, but it is one narrower perspective that emphasizes unconscious conflict and early experience.
Key insight: The biopsychosocial model is a framework for combining explanations, not a competing explanation of its own.
Question 2Foundational
Which form of therapy works by identifying and challenging distorted thought patterns while also changing the behaviors that maintain distress?
1. ACognitive-behavioral therapy
2. BPsychoanalysis
3. CPerson-centered therapy
4. DElectroconvulsive therapy
Show answer
Answer: A. Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy pairs restructuring of automatic negative thoughts with behavioral practice such as graded exposure. Psychoanalysis is the tempting distractor, but it seeks insight into unconscious conflict through free association and interpretation rather than direct work on present thoughts and habits.
Key insight: Match the therapy to its target: thoughts and behavior for CBT, unconscious conflict for psychoanalysis, and self-acceptance for person-centered work.
Question 3Intermediate
According to the diathesis-stress model, what combination brings on a psychological disorder?
1. AAn underlying predisposition together with a stressful environmental trigger
2. BA chemical imbalance in the brain acting entirely on its own
3. CUnresolved unconscious conflict carried forward from early childhood
4. DRepeated reinforcement of a maladaptive behavior
Show answer
Answer: A. An underlying predisposition together with a stressful environmental trigger
Diathesis-stress explains why two people with similar genetic vulnerability can have different outcomes: the disorder emerges when the predisposition meets sufficient stress. A chemical imbalance acting alone is the tempting distractor, but a purely biological account cannot explain why symptoms so often appear after a specific life stressor.
Key insight: Vulnerability loads the gun and stress pulls the trigger; neither alone is usually enough.
Question 4Intermediate
Which ethical requirement obliges researchers to tell prospective participants about the general nature and risks of a study before they agree to take part?
1. AInformed consent
2. BDebriefing
3. CConfidentiality
4. DProtection from harm
Show answer
Answer: A. Informed consent
Informed consent is given before participation so that agreement is genuinely voluntary and informed. Debriefing is the tempting distractor because it also involves disclosure, but it happens after the session and exists to explain any deception and address its effects.
Key insight: Consent comes first and debriefing comes last; deception is permitted only when a study is debriefed afterward.
Question 5Advanced
In schizophrenia spectrum disorders, what are symptoms such as flat affect, reduced speech, and withdrawal from activity called?
1. ANegative symptoms
2. BPositive symptoms
3. CProdromal symptoms
4. DDissociative symptoms
Show answer
Answer: A. Negative symptoms
Negative symptoms are deficits, meaning the absence or reduction of ordinary functioning. Positive symptoms are the tempting distractor, but positive here means additions to experience such as hallucinations and delusions, not desirable features.
Key insight: Positive and negative describe presence versus absence, not good versus bad, and negative symptoms tend to respond less well to medication.

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Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health