- Behaviour
- Thoughts
- Feelings (or emotions)
Elements of Abnormal Psychology - Physiology (or physical sensation)
*These are domains we look into when we talk about anything disordered or non-
adaptive
- No consensus definition
- However, there are some clear elements of abnormality
What is "abnormal?"
- Abnormal psychology is concerned with understanding the nature, causes, and
treatment of mental disorders.
- Subjective distress
- Maladaptiveness
- Statistical Deviancy
- Violation of social norms
- Social discomfort
Elements of Abnormality - Irrationality or unpredictability
- Dangerousness
* Consider elements as part of a set, not just individual items
* Things that don't seem rational
* The behavior or response does not seem typical or well suited to the situation
- Psychological suffering
- Almost without exception this is required for a psychological disorder
Subjective Distress - The person needs to be suffering
(Elements of Abnormality) - Although subjective distress is an element of abnormality in many cases, it is neither a
sufficient condition (all that is needed) nor even a necessary condition (a feature that all
cases of abnormality must show) for us to consider something as abnormal.
- Impairment in important area(s) of life, such as work, school, relationships etc
Maladaptiveness
- You need to have some dysfunction impairment to qualify as a psychological disorder
(Elements of Abnormality)
- But not all disorders involve maladaptive behavior.
- Something that is uncommon
- On the other hand, anxiety and depression are fairly common
- Example: bell curve
Statistical Deviancy
- If something is statistically rare and undesirable (as is severely diminished intellectual
(Elements of Abnormality)
functioning), we are more likely to consider it abnormal than something that is
statistically rare and highly desirable (such as genius) or something that is undesirable
but statistically common (such as rudeness).
- Acting outside of cultural standards
Violation of Social Norms
- Example: engaging in sex work (although this is not uncommon and not necessarily
outside of some culture's norms, but in Canada or Western cultures, it's outside of what
(Elements of Abnormality)
is considered typical)
- Causing others to feel uncomfortable
- This does not mean you feel uncomfortable
Social Discomfort
- This would be like walking down the street and you start talking to yourself, yelling,
laughing doing a silly dance -> other people would look trying to figure out 'what's she
(Elements of Abnormality)
doing? This is not typical and I'm feeling uncomfortable because of it"
- A person is causing others to feel uncomfortable -> Also a violation of social norms
, - Unexpected responses to stressors
- Example: If someone close to you had died, you wouldn't expect to be joyful, bubbly,
Irrationality or Unpredictability
happy for the following weeks, that would be unpredictable and it's not something that
would be expected. It does not mean people don't have different responses to grief,
(Elements of Abnormality)
for instance, so we take that into account when we are looking at what is considered
disordered or abnormal amounts of grief vs regular grief, or expected predictable grief
- Dangerous to self or other
- Example of a disorder where maybe the person in themselves does not experience
Dangerousness psychological suffering, but maybe is dangerous to other people
- Example: this might be an issue in psychopathy if you have someone with antisocial
(Elements of Abnormality) personality disorders or conduct disorder
Something where people are engaging in agressive acts towards other people but
maybe they don't feel themselves suffering
Family Aggregation
Family Aggregation Wether a disorder runs in families.
- The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) provides all the
information necessary (descriptions, lists of symptoms) to diagnose mental disorders.
As such, it provides clinicians with specific diagnostic criteria for each disorder.
What is the DSM?
- Although the DSM does not include information about treatment, clinicians need to
have an accurate diagnosis in order to select the most appropriate treatment for their
patients.
We use standardized manuals:
American Psychological Association (US and Canada): DSM-5
- In the latest version of the DSM people have tried to map more closely onto the ICD
World Health Organization (rest of world): ICD-10
How we classify abnormality
- More broad scope than DSM
* Who decides what's going to be in each of these manuals is the experts in that area of
field
* We're all affected by this -> you're not going to get reimbursed for or covered by your
health insurance if you don't have a diagnosable disorder
, - Classification systems provide us with a nomenclature (a naming system). This gives
clinicians and researchers both a common language and shorthand terms for complex
clinical conditions.
-Nomeclature (having the names) allows us to structure information (both in our own
minds and out in the world) to:
Communicate
- Research and clinical settings
Organize meaningfully
- Features of disorders
- You want as much info as possible to organize the features of the disorder in a
meaningful way which allows you to see relationships where you might not have seen
Why classify? otherwise
Facilitate research
- Causes and treatment
- If we find a cause for one kind of disorder if it's within an umbrella category, we can
think this might also be related to how these other disorders are caused and save us
some legman help us get further ahead in terms of treating disorder
Define what counts as 'abnormal'
- Keep in mind that diagnostic classification systems do not classify people. Rather, they
classify the disorders that people have
- A stigma may be less a consequence of the diagnostic label than a result of the
disturbed behavior that got the person the diagnosis in the first place
Social and political implications
How does a society address mental illness?
- Are people going to get rehabilitation/treatment? Or is this not something the
society thinks it can be treated so they're sort of shoved away?
- Confinement/ostracism? Are you saying if you have this disorder so you won't interact
with the rest of the public? kept separated?
Stigma against people with mental illness
Disadvantages of Classification How are people who have psychological disorders treated differently when this
information is public?
- A stigma can infiltrate and affect all those areas: Housing? Medical care? Social
relationships? Employment prospects?
- There are reasons that we tend to keep certain kinds of info hidden and that is often
because is stigma is associated with it
- Classification, by its very nature, provides information in a shorthand form. However,
using any form of shortand inevitably leads to loss of information
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