OCR Psychology A Level Book 2 sample

Background The historical context of mental health Topic 1 The specification requires that you know the background to the topic area. For topic 1 this is divided into three parts: historical views of mental illness, defining abnormality and categorising mental disorders. On this spread we look at four definitions of abnormality. This spread covers the essential information you will need on background for the exam but you also need to link the background to issues and debates and to the key research. We will look at these links on page 18. Deviation from social norms Explaining the concept This definition explains that what is considered ‘normal’ is determined by our society’s view of how we ‘ought’ to act. These norms are ‘social’ because they emerge from the views and behaviour of groups of people. In any society there are standards of acceptable behaviour that are set by the social group, and adhered to by those socialised into that group. Anyone who behaves differently, or ‘deviates’ from these socially created norms is classed as abnormal. What is classed as abnormal, using this definition, will depend on culture, historical context, age, gender and the situational context. For example, until 1973 homosexuality was designated abnormal by ‘official’ classification schemes. It was also against the law in the UK until 1967. Now in the 21st century views about homosexuality as a deviation from social norms have changed considerably in the UK. However, it is still (at the time of writing) illegal in over 70 countries around the world, therefore illustrating how social norms differ according to culture and time period. Thinking about the concept This definition does distinguish between desirable and undesirable behaviour, unlike the statistical infrequency model. So for example, this definition would not count having a very low depression score as abnormal, because society agrees that this is not a negative attribute. Likewise relatively common disorders like depression that are not statistically infrequent would be considered abnormal by the social norms definition because society generally agrees that the symptoms of depression are not how people ‘ought’ to act. However, the concept of deviation from social norms is that those who are eccentric or do not live according to the expectations of others can be branded ‘abnormal’ just because their lifestyle is not the same as the majority of people in society. The question is who should decide what is classed as a social norm, and also at what point behaviours become deviant? This links to the key research by Thomas Szasz on page 44 of this chapter. Statistical infrequency Explaining the concept One definition of abnormality is that it is a deviation from a statistically determined norm. This means that behaviours that occur infrequently are classed as ‘abnormal’. We know that in any quantifiable human characteristic, the majority of people’s scores will cluster around the mean , and that the further we go above or below that mean, the fewer people will attain that score. This is called the normal distribution (often referred to as a ‘bell curve’—as illustrated below). abnormal abnormal mean –3 SD –2 SD –1 SD 0 +1 SD +2 SD +3 SD Include mean, 1 %), 2 SD (with light the 2 % on each a label saying al’ . The statistical infrequency definition of abnormality suggests that anyone who lies in the tails of the normal distribution is by definition abnormal. In the case of mental illness the normal distribution does not apply—the distribution will have a positive skew . For example, if we consider the case of the symptoms of depression , the majority of people will show only one or two symptoms, such as difficulty sleeping and/or feeling sad for a prolonged period (and so will form the modal group near the bottom of the scale). Only a small number of people will have many symptoms (the right- hand tail of the skewed distribution) and some people will have none. Thinking about the concept It is worth noting that some statistically unusual (abnormal) behaviours are actually quite desirable. For example, those who score extremely low on the Beck Depression Inventory may be statistically abnormal but this is certainly not undesirable. In fact it would be seen as a positive thing to have a very low depression score. Equally, there are some statistically normal behaviours that are undesirable. For example, many people experience some symptoms of depression. We still wouldn’t want to call such symptoms ‘normal’. They are common but undesirable. A normal distribution Many human behaviours are ‘normally distributed’ —as shown here about 68% of a population will fall within one standard deviation of the mean on characteristics such as shoe size or intelligence. Defining abnormality There are many different ways to decide if a person’s behaviour and/or psychological state are sufficiently unusual, i.e. abnormal. It is an important decision because labelling people as ‘abnormal’ can have profound effects on how they are treated by family, friends, colleagues, employers, legal systems and doctors. Even their right to vote and their insurance premiums are affected by this label if it subsequently leads to a diagnosis of mental illness. Therefore, care must be taken when categorising someone as being abnormal. We will look at four different ways to define abnormality. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 A positively skewed distribution. Defining abnormality Chapter 1: Issues in mental health 12