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Understanding Abnormal Behavior: A Comprehensive Historical Perspective

This overview explores the concept of abnormal behavior through a historical lens, focusing on psychological disorders and the multifaceted definitions of "abnormality." It examines dysfunction, distress, and cultural responses while addressing different models of understanding mental illness, including the medical model and interactional views. Key elements like clinical descriptions, diagnostic labels, and their implications for treatment are discussed. Additionally, the text delves into prevalence, incidence, and various factors influencing mental health, paralleling historical traditions from supernatural beliefs to modern therapeutic practices.

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Understanding Abnormal Behavior: A Comprehensive Historical Perspective

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Abnormal Behavior: a historical perspective Being part of history

  2. What is abnormal? • Psychological disorders • Dysfunction* • Distress • Unexpected or atypical cultural response • * cognition, emotion, behavior

  3. Psychopathology • How one describes “problems” • The medical model • Mental problems as mental illness: disease • Interactional views or “systems thinking”

  4. Describing what you see, or what you think you see • Clinical descriptions lead to diagnostic labels • Labels can be helpful and/or harmful • Presenting problem: many different approaches • The “complaint” what the person describes or someone else describes as the reason for seeking treatment • Clear descriptions lead to clearer treatment

  5. Now it’s your turn: • Tom is uncomfortable riding elevators. Your office is on the fifteenth floor and Tom walked all the way up and not for the exercise • Rachel has been caught urinating in the corner of her bedroom.

  6. What is different about abnormality? • Prevalence • Incidence • Course • Chronic, episodic, time-limited • Prognosis • Onset • Acute, insidious

  7. Lots of other possible factors • Culture • Ethnicity • Race • Gender • Age • Developmental stage

  8. Some considerations • Causation: etiology • Some quite clear, others unknown or not understood • Biopsychosocial model: we’ll return to this • What to do or what not to do about it: treatment • Will it go away on its own or get worse? • Empirically validated treatments • Confounding variables: did the treatment work or was it something else? • The Placebo Effect

  9. Historical Traditions • Supernatural • Biological • Psychological • Psychoanalytic • Humanistic • Behavioral

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