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Abnormal Behavior: a historical perspective

Abnormal Behavior: a historical perspective. Being part of history. What is abnormal?. Psychological disorders Dysfunction* Distress Unexpected or atypical cultural response * cognition, emotion, behavior. Psychopathology. How one describes “problems” The medical model

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Abnormal Behavior: a historical perspective

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  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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