The Study of Abnormal Behavior - Coursework Example

Abnormal Psychology Abnormal Psychology The study of Abnormal Behavior explores two different categories of behavior. The first behavior is called the adaptive behavior. This means that an individual may have a mental problem but knows how to cope with the stressful environment around him. The second category is referred to as the maladaptive behavior (Oakland, 2012, pp3). This is a situation where one has a noticeable mental problem; the individual is very vulnerable to the day to day stresses in the environment and cannot cope with them. As a result, the individual may suffer mental retardation. Abnormal Psychology, also known as the Psychopathology in the clinical terms, is a field of Psychology that seeks to understand the research and treatment of the maladaptive mental problems in the society. Psychopathology goes deeper in diagnosing the disease behind the maladaptive behavior of a patient. Background of Mental Disorder In the ancient times, the maladaptive behaviors had been associated with possession of the evil spirits. Those who displayed such mental abnormality were perceived to have been invaded by some supernatural powers that were meant to destroy him. In those years, there were no special treatments for such persons. Psychopathology had not existed. The people had to devise their own means of diagnosing and treating a mentally retarded person. The ancient animists, who lived in the Stone Age periods, employed a treatment known as Trepanation in treating the possessed individual. Trepanation involved the boring of a small hole in the skull of the patient to release the bad spirit that had possessed him (Foucault, 2006, pp 34). Years later, the religious leaders in the earlier eras had to help abolish the trepanation and adopted Exorcism. Exorcism was a religious way of expelling the evil spirits from a person. It was done mainly through prayers and rituals. This method of mental disorder treatment had widely been practiced by the ancient Roman Catholic Church. Any individual seen to be portraying abnormality in the mind was said to have been invaded by the devil and only the supernatural powers of God was a panacea. Mental disorder was perceived as witchcraft and such members of the society could be exiled or even punished by death. It was then that the Asylums were established. Asylums date back to the middle ages and were used to contain the mentally retarded people. Such structures were built far away from the community and the abnormal individuals could be taken there in isolation. The first asylum was built in the 1547 by King Henry of England. These asylums were not in good conditions. The abnormal people used to live in very miserable state while there and, were not attended to. These people were seen as very heavy burdens to the sane society. They were treated like animals; beasts! For that matter, the asylums were sometimes used as tourist attractions. People from far away land would come to watch these beasts at a price. It was not until 18th Century when a French man, Pinel, started to advocate for more humanitarian and friendly ways of treating the insane in the society. His advocacy met a lot of opposition but later on became a success. Good and improved institutions were then established where such individual would obtain some treatment and counseling. Concepts of origins of abnormal behavior Over the years, philosophers and scientists have come up with comparative and contrasting concepts on the origin of mental retardation. Their arguments had been based on three major concepts: supernatural, the biological and the psychological. In many cases, these three approaches contradict each other in ideology. However, the abnormal psychology has been based on two major paradigms. These are the biological and the psychological paradigms. The biological explanations are based on the physical facets such the human chemistry and the genetics (Bentall, 2004, pp 12). On the other hand, psychological aspects include the behavioral causes of mental disorder. Supernatural concept This was a concept used by the ancient world in establishing the origin of the insanity. Most people believed that abnormal behaviors were caused by forces emanating from the outside of the human being. Demonology is another term for this approach as demons were said to be the sole causative agent of mental illness. However, this approach did not go further to establish the reasons why one would be possessed by the demons. It did not clearly expose the vulnerability of individual to possession of the evil spirits. This old concept only sought to know the cause and treatment but not prevention. In most severe cases, extreme treatment methods would involve starving or whipping the demons out of patients. As earlier mentioned, the major treatments for mental illness in line with this concept were the exorcism and trepanation. The Egyptians, Chinese and the Hebrews were the most communities who strongly believed in this approach. They, therefore, embraced exorcism as the only way of expelling the demons from the patients. The Romans, on the contrary, tended to believe that mental retardation was caused by humors imbalance in the brain. In the year 1530, the Swiss astrologer, Paracelsus advocated against the idea that mental retardation was caused by the possession of the demons and witches. However, he never provided a more advanced and a learned approach; he still suggested that mental illness was caused by the influence of the stars and the moon. He could not clearly explain how the movement of the moon, for instance, could influence an individual’s behavior. This belief in the demons as the sole causes of mental disorder is as modern as it is ancient. Today, many societies, especially in developing countries, still believe that mental abnormality is a resultant effect of the work of demons and only religious rituals can work best. Many mentally challenged persons are still being seen as cursed and no one would want to associate with them. This concept is obviously baseless to the learned society of the latter days. With the coming of the Western education to all the third world nations, many educated people have strongly disputed this approach as unnecessary superstition that has no logics at all. To the amazement of many, though, exorcism and religious rituals still work for some mentally retarded individuals. No one understands how such treatment as exorcism works; even the religious leaders cannot describe the mechanism behind it. In some cases, exorcism has healed individuals whose conditions were beyond the medical treatment. This approach to treating mental abnormality can be criticized as inhuman way of handling the mentally challenged person. Whipping would cause more injuries to the demon possessed person and, in rare case, would lead to lose of life. Starvation would make the patient very weak and vulnerable to other diseases. Trepanation, the act of cutting a hole through the head, sounds more like a homicide in itself. Catholic Church manual on the treatment of witches recommended burning as the most effective way of expelling the evil spirits. It stated that witches were bad omens and were responsible for all the bad occurrences in the society. This manual sounds biased. It had no firm grounds to support its findings. All the arguments and reasoning were based on assumptions and beliefs Biological concept The biological concept bases its explanations on the biological factors such as genetics and the general physiology of the human being. In this approach, all mental disorder has been treated as medical conditions that require the same attention as other human diseases. Here, any one is vulnerable to mental illness depending on his lifestyle (Trimble, 2012, pp2). The origin of this concept dates back to 350 BC, when Hippocrates, the founder of the Western medicine, suggested that mental illness can be treated just like any other medical condition. He changed the view of religious leaders on the mental disorder approaches. He argued that the brain was the seat of all the human behavioral aspects. Therefore, he believed that any abnormal behavior of an individual had to originate from his brain. In the 18th Century, this idea of Hippocrates of viewing the brain as the source of all the human behavior was largely embraced by the whole world, starting with the Romans. The medical concept and treatment of the mental illness focuses on the inheritance of the faulty genes. A mentally ill patient may have inherited the very genes from the parents. This person may also bear children with the same mental problem. Therefore, in treating such a condition, the doctor may sometimes need to probe for more information on the family lineage of the patient so as to establish the true cause of the disorder. However, not all mental disorders are caused by genes. Some disorders may be caused by infections in the brain. There are sensitive parts of the brain that when attacked by severe infections, may lead to disorientation of the nervous system thus insanity. Other causes may be physical injuries. For instance, when the head is hit by an object, it may cause a severe injury to the brain, leading to mental illness. The prolonged intake of some hard drugs such bhang can also cause mental retardation (Prabuh, 2014, pp16). Medical doctors must, therefore, establish the real cause of the mental retardation before recommending the appropriate treatment approach for the patient. The advantage of this approach is that it tries to establish the cause of the illness and recommends the most appropriate treatment module. Exorcism does not establish the cause and intensity of the illness. In the present biological approach, the patients have received more moral and friendly treatment and care from the doctors, unlike the historical approaches. The biological method has also, through consistent research, led to more advanced and effective drugs that have facilitated the quick treatment of mental illnesses (Bentall, 2004, pp23) However, the earlier form of this biological approach to mental illness treatment was never friendly at all. The very first hospital for the mentally ill patients was established in London and was called the Bethlehem of London. Here, the patients would be tied with chains and sometimes whipped by their care takers. The hospital was also overcrowded. No appropriate medicine was prescribed for them. Today, in some developing countries, hospitals that offer mental health treatment are still very few and the population of the people with mental disorders continues to grow. This has led to such wards being overcrowded by the patients, just like the Bethlehem of London. Mental Health specialists are also scarce, leaving some patients unattended. It is still a challenge for many doctors to get the full corporation of the mentally ill patients as they are easily distracted. This is the main cause of slow treatment of these patients. Psychological concept This concept focuses on the observable behavior of an individual as the major cause of the psychological abnormality. The psychological concept tries to encourage the adaptive behavior and discouraging the deviant behaviors. The behavior of an individual may lead to him having mental problem. For instance, if an individual acquires a deviant behavior and engages himself in the abuse of the hard drugs, he may, in the long run, suffer mental retardation. Psychological approach, therefore, seeks to discourage such behavior that may lead to retardation. However, it has been a challenge for the psychologists to classify and distinguish deviant behaviors from good behaviors since behaviors vary with the culture of a society. The three aforementioned concepts have in the recent past, undergone advancement and more logical reasoning has been proposed in dealing with abnormal psychology. Recently, more concepts of abnormality have been enlisted as follows: Psychometric abnormality- this is when an individual’s behavior widely differs from the rest of the society. Psychometric approach states that an abnormality is deviation from a predetermined norm. Many societies have strict framework of regulations that guide their members. If a member slightly deviates from these guidelines through a given strange behavior, he may be termed by the society as abnormal. For instance, if, in a religious family, a member decides to abuse drugs, his behavior can be termed as abnormal. However, this behavior does not deem him as a mentally retarded person. Statistical abnormality- this is a situation whereby a certain behavior or characteristic is only noticeable in a few members of the society and not portrayed by others. For instance, a group of extremely rich persons in a poor population may be viewed as abnormal. This does not, however, make such a group mentally ill. Somatogenic abnormality- this approach focuses only on the brain as the cause of mental illness. It argues that all abnormalities are the resultant effects of the biological disorientation in the human brain. This concept has led to medical scientist coming up with the biological mental disorder treatment such the lobotomy and the paraphernalia (Davey, 2008, pp25). Psychogenic abnormality- this recent concept is a way of treating all mental illnesses as psychological problems. Most patients treated with this approach undergo thorough counseling sessions. The psychogenic approach of treatment in 1778 was to nurse people with hysterical problems. Psychogenic technique has evolved from mesmerism to more modern and civilized approaches. Mesmer’s hypnotism in the darkness was not quite reliable and universally accepted. This disagreement led to him banned from operating his clinics in Paris. On a closer scrutiny, the government of France needed not to banned Mesmer and his catharsis technique when it had not established a reliable solution to mentally disturbed citizens. Hypnotism, though not accepted by others, had worked for many patients already and they were just doing well. Psychoanalysis approach replaced the catharsis. It involved both psychological and biological therapies. This advancement was advantageous since it provided treatment to very adverse disorders such as anxiety and schizophrenia. The approach dictated that the patients be admitted and retained in the hospitals so as to get the maximum care of the doctors and the therapists. This was a good move as it saved many patients from the hostile community. However, the year 1970 saw many inmates being discharged and taken back to the community (Foucault, 2006, pp56). The community care had been well structured by the hospital administration. This was a wise decision but it did very little for some patients who were discharged. Here is how the hospital administration went wrong: they failed to train the inmates about the life skills after discharge. Many patients had spent years in the hospitals and had been used to being served by the nurses and the hospital workers. This was the life they knew. When they were set free to join the rest of the outside community, they found it so hard to adapt. They could not do a thing on their own, therefore, became a burden to the community. Some of them who had no family members ended up in very miserable lifestyles. Others opted to go back to the hospital. As a recommendation, the hospitals of the modern days should teach the mentally ill patients a few self-help skills to enable them adapt quickly in their various communities. Combinations of abnormality- this approach employs both the somatogenic and psychogenic concepts. When a patient is treated using this concept, both the medical and the psychological aspects of his life is looked into. He is, therefore, given medicine by the doctors as well as counseling by the psychiatric. This is the method applied by many specialists today (Matson, 2008, pp6). The impacts of DSM and ICD The Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) and, the International Classification of Diseases, are diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. The DSM and the ICD are the most recent dimensional approaches to diagnosis of the mental disorders (DSM, 1994, pp1). These two approaches have positively impacted on the treatment of mental disorders by facilitating a quicker diagnosis. In the past, mentally ill patients could just be given treatment without proper detailed diagnosis. Cases of heterogeneity, where two mentally retarded patients have same diagnosis show different symptoms, have been solved by the two dimensional techniques. These approaches clearly establish the human aspect that has become problematic and needs urgent attention. They also explain how the problematic aspect arose. DSM is well known for better classification of mental illness based on research while ICD is praised for its very discrete clinical diagnosis (Tyrer, 2014, pp8). DSM has helped doctors define and appropriately classify various mental complications. This technique also states that the mentally ill people are not very different from the sane population; they are just extremists. Patients have the main beneficiaries of these techniques. Bibliography Bentall, R. P. 2004. Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature. London. Penguin Books. Davey, G. 2008. Psychopatholgy: Research, Assessment and Treatment in Clinical Psychology, Chichester: BPS Blackwell. Prabhu, R. 2014. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. [Online]. Available at [Accessed 26 October, 2014]. American Psychiatric Association. 1994. DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. New York: American Psychiatric Association Foucault, M. 2006. History of Madness (ed. Jean Khalfa). London. Routledge Johnny, M. 2008. Clinical Assessment and Intervention for Disorders. Boston. Elsevier Inc. Oakland, T. 2008. Adaptive Behavior Assesment System. Philadelphia. Academic Press Trimble, M. 2012. Anatomy of Neuropsychiatry. New York. Elsevier Inc Tyrer, P. 2014. A Comparison of DSM and ICD Classification of Mental Disorder. [Online]. Available at [Accessed 26 October, 2014] Read More