Psychology for Dummies (57 page)
Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
Obviously, by
abnormal
I mean not normal — something beyond the usual and customary. I’ve never taught a psychology course without at least one student raising a protest against the concept of abnormal behavior. “Who gets to decide what is normal and what is not?” he or she often asks. This is an excellent question. Who does get to decide what is normal and what is not? And how is a standard of normality determined?
Every society in the world has standards of behavior and conduct that delineate what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Individuals, families, and even groups have
norms,
or standards. When people act outside those norms, society labels either the behavior or the person himself as “abnormal.” There are at least five different ways, or criteria, to define normal versus abnormal behavior:
Normative criterion:
People who do things contrary to what the majority of people do or who act very differently than what is expected are acting abnormally. We are expected to live up to societal norms; we suspect something is amiss when we don’t. Sometimes we use statistics to figure out who’s outside the norm. If nine out of ten people act a certain way, the behavior of the one person who doesn’t conform is statistically abnormal. The non-conforming behavior is considered rare.
Subjective criterion:
Sometimes we sense our feelings may be different than those of most other people or we may be doing something differently than the way most others do it. In this very limited sense, we’re abnormal. Also, if I feel like something is wrong with me because of my awareness of my being different, then I might consider myself a suitable subject of abnormal psychology. This is a case of judging one’s own behavior as abnormal.
Maladaptive criterion:
Does my behavior help me survive and successfully function in my society? If not, according to this criterion, maladaptive behavior is abnormal. If I have a difficult time adapting and adjusting to life’s demands, my behavior is maladaptive.
Unjustifiable or unexplainable criterion:
Sometimes people act in ways and do things that can’t be explained. We typically assume that there must always be a reason why someone acts in a certain way. If we can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for these actions, we may label their behavior abnormal.
No matter what definition we use, it’s pretty hard to argue that everything is normal. I realize that some people think that our lives are one big free-for-all, but in reality, every society requires a degree of order. Whether it is a family, a tribe or a nation, mores and laws are needed to enforce/maintain structure and order. I define
abnormal behavior
as maladaptive behavior and mental processes detrimental to an individual’s physical and psychological well-being.
So, if someone acts abnormally, does that mean that he has a mental illness or psychological disorder? No, not necessarily. A person can act abnormally for any number of reasons. In fact, at one point in history, people believed (and some still do) that abnormal behavior was caused by demonic possession or moral weakness. What about committing murder? Isn’t that abnormal? In fact, murder meets all five of the criteria we established earlier to define abnormal behavior.
The concept of
mental illness
comes primarily from psychiatry.
Psychiatry
is a branch of medicine that deals with mental disorders. During the nineteenth century, people who acted abnormally became the province of physicians. These “crazy” people were seen as sick instead of morally inept or demonically possessed. This way of looking at abnormal behavior was actually a big advance in the care of these people. When physicians began to be responsible for the care of those behaving abnormally, abnormal behavior was viewed as a medical problem and was considered an illness, to be diagnosed and treated like all other illnesses and diseases. This is known as the
medical model of mental illness.
Compared to medical doctors,
psychologists
are relative newcomers to the field of mental illness as defined by psychiatry. As physicians tried to figure out ways to help people from a medical model perspective, psychologists eventually joined in, bringing their knowledge of human behavior and mental processes to the research, diagnosis, and treatment of abnormal behavior that was determined to be due to a mental illness.
It is important to make a distinction between abnormal behavior that is due to a mental illness and abnormal behavior that is not. A lot of abnormal behaviors are not due to the presence of a mental illness. Take slam dancing, for example. It’s pretty abnormal to find enjoyment in running into people and bouncing around a pit of human pinballs. Yeah, I think that’s abnormal, but do I think that this behavior is a result of mental illness? That depends, but for the most part no! Again, keep in mind that there are as many potential causes of abnormal behavior out there as there are people.
Over the years, psychiatrists and psychologists have worked to delineate what abnormal behaviors constitute the presence of a mental illness and what behaviors do not. This process is called
taxonomy
— the science of classification. Today, the most widely used classification system for determining the presence of a mental disorder is the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th Edition, (DSM-IV)
published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1984. The definition of a mental disorder presented in the
DSM-IV
is “a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom), or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning), or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom.”
A couple of key words in this definition need extra attention:
Symptom:
A behavior or mental process that is a sign or signal of a potential disorder. Symptoms are usually found within the following categories:
• Thinking or thought processes
• Mood or affect (referring to how someone feels emotionally, such as depressed, angry, or fearful) and vegetative symptoms (concerning eating, sleeping, and energy level)
• Behavior (such as violence, compulsive gambling, or drug use)
• Physical signs (such as muscle or joint pain, headaches, excessive sweating)
Disorder:
A collection of symptoms that indicate the presence of a syndrome (co-occurring groups of symptoms). In developing a taxonomy of abnormal psychological disorders, psychiatrists and psychologists look for specific groups of symptoms that tend to occur together, distinguishing one set of co-occurring symptoms that are distinct from other sets of co-occurring symptoms.
I want to make a couple of final points before we get into the specific mental disorders most commonly observed by mental health professionals today. First, it is important to realize that all behavior is viewed on a continuum of normal to abnormal. For example, crying is a normal behavior, but crying every day, all day for more than two weeks is considered abnormal. Second, everyone has experienced a symptom of mental disorder at one time or another. But simply having a symptom of mental disorder does not mean a person has the actual disorder. Remember, disorders consist of specific groupings of symptoms that define a particular syndrome. The rules for determining what symptoms constitute a disorder are complex and include specific time frames and degrees of severity.
So don’t get carried away and start diagnosing everyone you know just because you see a symptom or two. It’s not that simple; a symptom does not a disorder make!