What is “Crazy”?
Normal or Not?
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Story: A man living in the Ozark
Mountains has a vision in which God
speaks to him. He begins preaching to
his relatives and neighbors, and soon has
the entire town in a state of religious
panic. People begin to say that he has a
“calling.” His reputation as a prophet and
a healer spreads, and in time he is
drawing large audiences wherever he
goes.
However, when he ventures in St. Louis
ad attempts to hold a prayer meeting,
blocking traffic on main street at rush
hour, he Is arrested. He tells the
policemen about his conversations with
God, and they hurry him off to the nearest
mental hospital.
Normal or not?
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Who is right…The man who
believes he is a prophet, or the
police officers?
It Is often difficult to draw a line
between normal and abnormal
behavior.
Behavior that some consider to be
normal seems abnormal to others.
Many people believe that having
visions and hearing voices are
important parts of a religious
experience.
Other people believe that these are
symptoms of a psychological
disorder.
Normal or Not?
The man in the example on the
previous slide was interviewed
by psychiatrists, diagnosed as
paranoid schizophrenic, and
hospitalized.
 Had he stayed at home, people
would have continued to see
him as perfectly normal – even
popular…
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Defining and Identifying Psychological Disorders
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In the previous example, the
man was classified as mentally
troubled because his behavior
was so different from what
others felt was normal under
the circumstances.
Yet, the fact that a person is
different does not necessarily
mean that he or she is suffering
from a mental illness.
Deviation from Normality
One approach to
defining abnormality
is to say that
whatever most people
do is normal.
 Abnormality, then,
would be any
deviation from the
average or from the
majority.
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Deviation from Normality
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The deviance approach,
however, as commonly used
as it is, has serious
limitations.
For example: If most people
cheat on their income-tax
returns, does that mean that
the people who do not cheat
are abnormal?
Because the majority is not
always right or best, the
deviance approach to
defining abnormality is not by
itself a useful standard.
Adjustment
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Another way to distinguish
normal from abnormal
people is to say that normal
people are able to get along
in the world – physically,
emotionally, and socially.
Basically, people who live
by the rules of society.
By this definition, abnormal
people would be the ones
who fail to adjust to society.
What do you think?
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So what is right?
Who is to say what
issues constitute a
psychological
disorder, and what
issues are merely
minor variations from
what is considered to
be normal behavior?
So, what does it mean to have a
psychological disorder?
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Psychological Disorder-a harmful dysfunction
in which behaviors are maladaptive, unjustifiable,
disturbing, and atypical…M.U.D.A.
M-maladaptive
 U-unjustifiable
 D-disturbing
 A-atypical
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Maladaptive Behavior
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Refers to types of behaviors that inhibit a
person’s ability to adjust to particular
situations and are destructive.
People cannot adapt to what life gives them.
 They exhibit behavior that is destructive to
oneself or others.
 Got any examples?
 Here is one
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Unjustifiable
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Without a rational basis
Disturbing Behavior
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Troublesome to other people
Atypical
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So different that it violates a norm
Can you think of anything?
 How about this?
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Read these one and try to
diagnose…
A man walks up to a window, by or
through which no one can see him,
carrying a chair. He puts down the
chair, opens the window, takes off his
clothes, and seats himself on the
chair. Why? He says he feels the
need to take an “air bath.”
Every morning, a woman who lives in a
Boston suburb asks her husband to bring in
the morning newspaper, which the carrier
throws just inside their fence. She does
this because she is terribly afraid of
encountering a poisonous snake. Her
husband, concerned about her behavior,
repeatedly tells her that there are no
poisonous snakes living in their town.
Nevertheless, she is afraid to leave the
house.
A teenage boy packs a blanket and
a bottle of water. Ignoring nearfreezing temperatures, he climbs a
nearby mountain, spreads the
blanket on the ground, sits crosslegged on it, closes his eyes, and
remains there throughout the night.
In the morning, he runs home and
tells his father he has seen a vision.
A teenage girl misses school for 3
days. She periodically breaks
into tears. She finds it nearly
impossible to get out of bed in the
morning, although she cannot
sleep for more than an hour or
two at a time. She has no
appetite and becomes nauseated
if people urge her to eat.
Last one…
Anne is a sixteen-year-old girl living in a medium-sized city in the Midwest. Her
family includes a mother, father, fourteen-year-old brother, and a great-aunt,
who has lived with the family since Anne was four. Anne is a junior at City
High School and is taking a college-preparatory program. Her appearance is
strikingly different from the other girls in her class.
She wears blouses which she has made out of various scraps of material. The
blouses are accompanied by the same pair of overalls everyday, two
mismatched shoes, and a hat with a blue feather. She is a talented artist,
producing sketches of her fellow classmates that are remarkably accurate.
She draws constantly, even when told that to do so will lower her grade in
classes where she is expected to take lecture notes. She has no friends at
school, but seems undisturbed by the fact that she eats lunch by herself and
walks alone around the campus. Her grades are erratic; if she likes a class
she often receives an A or B, but will do no work at all in those she dislikes.
Anne can occasionally be heard talking to herself; she is interested in poetry,
and says she is "composing" if asked about her poetry. She refuses to watch
television, calling it a "wasteland." This belief is carried into the classroom,
where she refuses to watch videotapes, saying they are poor excuses for
teaching. Her parents say they don’t understand her; she isn’t like anyone in
their family. She and her brother have very little in common. He is
embarrassed by Anne’s behavior, and doesn’t understand her either. Anne
seems blithely unaware of her apparent isolation, except for occasional
outbursts about the meaninglessness of most people’s activities.
How do we explain disorders?
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Medical Model of explanation
Caused primarily by biological reasons
 We treat these causes through medicine,
surgery, and ECT (shock therapy)
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Bio-Psycho-Social Model of explanation
Caused by a combination of reasons (mostly
psychological trauma)
 We treat with psychotherapy
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A Few Different Types of
Disorders
Anxiety
 Dissociative- (MPD)
 Eating
 Factitious
 Impulse Control- _____mania
 Nero cognitive
 Mood
 Nero developmental
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