Psychological Disorders

A mental disorder is any behavior or emotional state that:
- Causes an individual great suffering.
- Is self-destructive.
- Seriously impairs the person’s ability to work or get along with others.
- Endangers others or the community.

Over 40 million American adults suffer from a mental health condition.
This is more than the population of New York and Florida combined.
One in six American adults suffers from a psychological disorder (or multiple).
A psychological disorder is defined as a clinically significant collection of symptoms (a syndrome) characterized by serious disruptions in an individual's thoughts, feelings, and/or actions.

Patterns of behaviors, thoughts, or emotions are considered pathological (diseased or disordered) for one or more of four reasons:
- Deviance
- Dysfunction
- Distress
- Danger

From what?
- From behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that differ markedly from a society's ideas about proper functioning.
- From social norms: Stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.
Examples?
- Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society as norms grow from a particular culture.
- They also depend on specific circumstances.

Behavior, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress before they can be labeled abnormal.
However this is not always the case.

Abnormal behavior tends to be dysfunctional—it interferes with daily functioning.
Culture plays a role in the definition of abnormality.
Dysfunction alone does not necessarily indicate psychological abnormality.

Mentally ill people are often dangerous and unpredictable.
People with psychological disorders act in bizarre ways and are very different from normal people.
Psychological disorders are a sign of personal weakness.
Most mentally ill individuals can work at only low-level jobs and never recover from their problems.

Ancient societies probably regarded abnormal behavior as the work of evil spirits.
This view may have begun as far back as the Stone Age.
The treatment for severe abnormality was to force the demons from the body through trephination and exorcism.

Philosophers and physicians offered different explanations and treatments for abnormal behaviors.
Hippocrates believed and taught that illnesses had natural causes.
- Looked to an unbalance of the four fluids, or humors:
  - Suggested treatments attempted to “rebalance”.
- Humors: According to the Greeks and Romans, bodily chemicals that influence mental and physical functioning.

The church rejected scientific forms of investigation, and it controlled all education.
Religious beliefs dominant.
Abnormality was seen as a conflict between good and evil.
Some of the earlier demonological treatments reemerged.
At the close of the Middle Ages, demonology and its methods began to lose favor again.

Demonological views of abnormality continued to decline.
German physician Johann Weyer believed that the mind was as susceptible to sickness as the body.
The care of people with mental disorders continued to improve in this atmosphere.
Religious shrines were devoted to the humane and loving treatment of people with mental disorders.
This time also saw a rise of asylums – institutions whose primary purpose was care of the mentally ill, but became virtual prisons due to overcrowding.
Improvement came in 1792, when Philippe Pinel, a French physician, was placed in charge of a Parisian asylum.
Believing that inmates' behavior was caused by underlying physical illness, he insisted that they be unshackled and removed from their dark, unheated cells.
Many inmates improved so dramatically that they could be released.
Pinel's actions reflect the ideals of the modern medical model, which assumes that diseases (including mental illness) have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and possibly cured and prevented.
This medical model is the foundation of the branch of medicine, known as psychiatry.

Between 1907 and 1963, over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.
By 1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S. states combined.
The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by California's.

Classification of abnormal behavior aims to place it in specific categories.
Without a clear, reliable system for classifying the wide range of psychological disorders, scientific research on them would be almost impossible, and communication among mental health professionals would be seriously impaired.
Mental health specialists share a uniform classification system, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5 tr).
This manual has been updated and revised several times, and the fifth edition was published in 2022 (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).

Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder is new to DSM-5 and is included in the Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders chapter.
Hoarding disorder is new to DSM-5.