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Before You Go! It is important to note that having a mental disorder does not mean you are also automatically dangerous. The depressed or anxious individual is often no more a threat than someone who is not depressed and as Hiday and Burns showed, dangerousness is more the exception than the rule. Still, mental health professionals have a duty to report to law enforcement when a mentally disordered individual expresses intent to harm another person or themselves.
It is important to point out that people seen as dangerous are also not automatically mentally ill. Culture — the totality of socially transmitted behaviors, customs, values, technology, attitudes, beliefs, art, and other products that are particular to a group. Dangerousness — when behavior represents a threat to the safety of the person or others. Deviance — a move away from what is normal, or the mean or behavior that occurs infrequently sort of an outlier in our data.
Distress — a disabling condition in social, occupational, or other important activities. Multi-Criteria approach — all definitions of abnormality are used to determine whether an individuals behavior is abnormal. Privacy Policy. Time must also be taken into account, as what is considered abnormal at one time in one culture may be normal another time, even in the same culture. For example, one hundred years ago, a pregnancy outside of marriage was considered a sign of mental illness and some women were institutionalized, whereas now this is not the case.
Different people can behave in the same way and for some will be normal and others abnormal, depending on age and gender and sometimes other factors. For example, a man wearing a dress and high heels may be considered socially abnormal as society would not expect it, whereas this is expected of women. The most obvious problem with defining abnormality using social norms is that there is no universal agreement over social norms.
Social norms are culturally specific - they can differ significantly from one generation to the next and between different ethnic, regional and socio-economic groups. In some societies, such as the Zulu for example, hallucinations and screaming in the street are regarded as normal behavior. Social norms also exist within a time frame, and therefore change over time. Behavior that was once seen as abnormal may, given time, become acceptable and vice versa.
For example, drink driving was once considered acceptable but is now seen as socially unacceptable whereas homosexuality has gone the other way. Until homosexuality was considered a psychological disorder by the World Health Organization WHO but today is considered acceptable.
Social norms can also depend on the situation or context we find ourselves in. Is it normal to eat parts of a dead body? In a rugby team who survived a plane crash in the snow-capped Andes of South America found themselves without food and in sub-freezing temperatures for 72 days. In order to survive, they ate the bodies of those who had died in the crash. Failure to function adequately is a definition of abnormality where a person is considered abnormal if they are unable to cope with the demands of everyday life, or experience personal distress.
They may be unable to perform the behaviors necessary for day-to-day living e. One limitation of this definition is that apparently abnormal behavior may actually be helpful, function and adaptive for the individual. For example, a person who has the obsessive-compulsive disorder of hand-washing may find that the behavior makes him cheerful, happy and better able to cope with his day. Abnormality can be defined as a deviation from ideal mental health.
This requires us to decide on the characteristics we consider necessary for mental health. Jahoda defined six criteria by which mental health could be measured:. Although for many years autism was thought to be primarily a socially determined disorder, in which parents who were cold, distant, and rejecting created the problem, current research suggests that biological factors are most important.
Scientists speculate that autism is caused by an unknown genetically determined brain abnormality that occurs early in development. It is likely that several different brain sites are affected Moldin, , and the search for these areas is being conducted in many scientific laboratories.
The problem is that diagnosis is not exact remember the idea of categories , and the experts themselves are often unsure how to classify behaviour. Furthermore, the appropriate classifications change with time and new knowledge. American Psychiatric Association. Barkley, R. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment 2nd ed.
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