Welcome to PSYC 360!
Chapter 1: An Overview of Abnormal Psychology
What Makes a Disorder a Disorder?
neurodevelopmental disorders, schizophrenia spectrum
and other psychotic disorders, bipolar and related
disorders, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders,
obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, trauma- and
stressor-related disorders, dissociative disorders,
somatic symptom disorders, feeding and eating disorders,
elimination disorders, sleep-wake disorders, sexual
dysfunctions, gender dysphoria, disruptive, impulse
control, and conduct disorders, substance use and
addictive disorders, neurocognitive disorders, personality
disorders, paraphilic disorders, other disorders
How Can We Define Abnormality?
• Distinguishing between necessary and sufficient conditions
• Necessary: A condition that all examples of a category
must share
• It is necessary for all English words to have at least
one vowel
• Sufficient: All that is needed for an example to be
considered part of a category
• Vowels alone are not sufficient to form English words
How Can We Define Abnormality?
• Subjective distress: Does it cause pain?
• Maladaptiveness: Does it interfere with
someone’s ability to live their best life?
• Statistical deviancy: How rare is it?
• Violation of social standards: Has it violated
(spoken or unspoken) rules of conduct?
• Social discomfort: Are other people
bothered by the social norm violation?
• Irrationality and unpredictability: Is the
behavior expected and/or controllable?
• Dangerousness: Does the behavior lead to
harm towards self or others? This is a Young Frankenstein reference. “Abby
Normal” was a whole thing in that movie. Jokes
are always funnier when you explain them! $
Changing Views of Abnormality
• “Abnormality” is
predicated on socially
constructed value
judgments
• What are some things
that are considered
normal today that
would have been
considered highly
deviant in the past?
drapetomania
Culture-Bound Syndromes
• According to the DSM,
culture-bound syndromes
are “recurrent, locality-
specific patterns of aberrant
behavior and troubling
experience that may or may
not be linked to a
particular… diagnostic
category”
• Examples: Amok, ataque de
nervios, ghost sickness, taijin
kyofusho, etc.
Defining Mental Illnesses: The DSM
• The Diagnostic & Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders
specifies the number and type
of symptoms that are necessary
to diagnose specific mental
illnesses
• Only focuses on nosology
(classification), not etiology
(identifying potential causes)
The Power of Labels
• For researchers and clinicians, labeling illnesses can help identify
research and treatment strategies (by providing a nomenclature)
• For those with certain illnesses, labels can provide a sense of relief and a
sense of community for people suffering from purportedly unrelated
symptoms, BUT they can also have stigmatizing, other-ing effects
• On Being Sane in Insane Places (David Rosenhan)
• Trained participants simulated auditory hallucinations in order to gain
admission into various psychiatric hospitals and acted normally once
admitted
• All were forced to admit having mental illnesses and to take
antipsychotic medications as conditions of release
How Common Are Mental Illnesses?
50
40
30
20
10
0
Any Anxiety
Any Mood
Any Substance
Any DSM
Disorder Disorder Use Disorder Disorder
One-Year Prevalence Lifetime Prevalence
Some Epidemiological Terms
• Prevalence: How many cases are active during a given
period of time?
• Point prevalence: At one specific time
• One-year prevalence: At any point during one year
• Lifetime prevalence: At any point during a person’s life
(includes people who are currently recovered)
• Incidence: How many new cases have occurred during a
given period of time?
The Global Burden of Mental Illnesses
DALYs: Disability-adjusted life years; the total (worldwide) number of otherwise healthy
years that are lost/profoundly impacted by a certain disorder
How We Talk (Or Don’t Talk) About Mental Illness
• Many mental illnesses are at least as heritable as many
“physical” illnesses (e.g., heart disease, many kinds of cancer)
• These illnesses are too symptomatically diverse for a catch-all
umbrella term to be accurate or useful
• “Mentally ill” = “Scary, dangerous, and violent”
• Stigma as a barrier to public (or even private) discourse
• Media representations: How single stories can become the
only story
What Works to Reduce Stigma?
• Knowing that mental illnesses have neurobiological
bases? ❌ ❌ ❌
• Contact with members of a stigmatized group? ✅ ✅ ✅
• But some people may have preexisting beliefs that
these interactions will be unpleasant → less likely to
seek out such interactions in the first place
• Deliberate stigma reduction education/advocacy in
abnormal psych classes (!!!) ✅ ✅ ✅
Mental Health Professionals
• Psychiatrist: Medical doctor with
the power to prescribe
• Clinical psychologist: Licensed
therapist with a doctoral degree
(Ph.D. or Psy.D.) in psychology
• Clinical social worker: Licensed
therapist with a master’s in social
work
• Psychiatric nurse: Provides daily
support for those in inpatient care
The APA’s Guidelines for When to Seek Help
• Disruptive fears
• Compulsive rituals
• Sudden mood shifts
• Seeing or hearing things
• Self-destructive behavior
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Deep and lasting depression
• Thoughts of suicide or self-harm
