Custom essays on Defining Abnormality

The problem of mental illnesses – is one of the most important issues in today’s world. Defining abnormality in this paper I would like to pay specific attention on the challenges in defining and classifying normal and abnormal behaviour.
For instance, when a person is behaving abnormally due to some mental illness, he cannot withstand the force of everyday’s hardships in a successful manner, or his life changes its character. Such variation of dysfunctional behaviour could manifest itself as a lack of personal hygiene and many other problems. A person who has such dysfunctional difficulties in life is considered abnormal and it is hard to him to take care of itself and own family. As we see from the above used example, abnormality is connected with mind and body through demonstrations of their functioning in behaviour.
Thinking about abnormal behaviour we could simply say that it is deviating from the norm, but in my opinion it is too simple definition. Abnormal behaviour is often defined as behaviour that is considered to be deviant or maladaptive in the frames of specific social culture in which it has a place. Two major paradigms are used for explaining mental disorders and connection between mind and body in the frames of abnormal psychology. They are psychological paradigm that explains influences on certain states of mind and biological paradigm that shows the essence of physical factors.
Classification of abnormal is based on the following criteria:
 Deviation from statistical norms;
 Deviation from social norms;
 Maladaptiveness of behavior: maladaptive to one’s self and maladaptive to society;
 Personal distress.
In continuation of the topic it is necessary to mention that the classification of abnormal behavior can vary widely based on situational factors and according to it situational factors play important role in diagnosing mental disorders. For example, let’s consider a person who is concerned after the beginning of a new job. Since most people experience anxiety in stressful situations such as this, the therapists believe this pattern of soft normal anxiety. Extreme anxiety or lack of it at all, may be considered as a deviation from the norm. Of course, not always clear-cut statistical frequency or rarity is denominated. The next situation, let’s suppose that the newly widowed woman tells you that she heard her dead husband talking to her. You can assume that it is very unusual behavior and it should be classified as abnormal, but this assumption is wrong. In fact, 50-90% of the investigated recently widowed people are experiencing these hallucinations. Thus, the behavior that seems abnormal is not statistical rarity.
Abnormal behaviour is a known psychological disorder. Thus, we must use several criteria before announcing the behaviour as abnormal. It is very difficult to agree where to draw the line between normality and abnormality. It is easily to distinguish it on the poles, but in the middle it is rather hard to do, because in situation of mental disorder or under the influence of various situational factors body defends itself by new combinations of previously existed functions and the mind changes its structures in different ways.

References
Bennett, P. (2003). Abnormal and Clinical Psychology. Open University Press.
Hansell, J. & Damour, L. (2008). Abnormal Psychology, 2nd ed. Wiley.
Stravynski, A. & O’Connor, K. (1995). Understanding and Managing Abnormal Behavior: The Need for a New Clinical Science. Journal of Psychology, Vol. 129.