How often do we casually call each other crazy or just randomly call someone OCD or Paranoid? Or how often do we tell others or ourselves whose going through emotional pain that “It’s nothing”, “It’s not a big deal”… “Sleep over it”.. “Have a drink and get over it”..???
Do we really know what is “crazy” or what’s normal and what’s NOT?? The question of what is “sane” and what’s not extends to everyday life among everyday people.
This Blog is for all those people who either constantly keep thinking that there is something majorly wrong with them or those, who despite going through difficult times, feel that they do not need help. This blog is also for all those who need to understand and sensitize ourselves to the distress of others or one self and not keep randomly judging rather misjudging others or one self, their behaviours, thoughts and problems in life.
In our everyday lives, the words such as insanity, emotional disturbance, abnormality, mental illness, psychological disorder have roughly the same meaning. Most people just randomly throw out these words at one self or others to imply that their behavior is highly unusual or that their unusual behavior is just something that they can choose to get over.
Abnormality is defined as a significant deviance from commonly accepted patterns of behavior, emotion or thought. Psychological disorders are defined as patterns of abnormal behavior, emotions or thought that significantly interfere with an individual’s adaptation to important life demands and often cause distress in the individual or in others.
How do you think Mental Health Professionals have a judgment on which behaviours require professional help and which don’t?? Well…. Listed below are few factors that mental health professionals use to assess any particular behavior at any given time.
Social Context
Normality and Deviance must be judged in the context of a particular social situation. It may feel quiet natural to sing on top of your voice at home when alone but doing the same while seated in one of your classes or meetings, does raise claims to the behavior being deviant and repeatedly doing the same would make people suggest one to take professional help.
Distress in Others
People identified as having psychological disorders are often those, whose behaviours’ disturb others or cause others discomfort. For example, a person who has extremities in perfection, organization, cleanliness would just be looked upon as a “perfectionist fellow”, but the hidden side would involve others close to him being under a lot of pressure and distress.
Distress to Self
Distress to self can include feelings of dissatisfaction, sadness, anxiety or lethargy; physical complaints such as nausea or headaches or unwanted thoughts or impulses. Problems that do not seem major to an outside observer can overwhelm certain individuals.
Intensity
The frequency, degree or intensity of certain behaviours also helps determine how deviant they are judged to be. For example, all of us are nervous or anxious at times, but some are judged to be clinically disturbed because their anxiety is intense, persistent and affects their functioning in their day to day lives. Behaviours that are extremely under-done or over-done are generally considered deviant.
Impairment of Adaptive functioning
Adaptation here means meeting the performance requirements or role demands of one’s situations. When one’s daily routine seems to be getting affected in one or many ways such as, difficulty in adjusting to work, maintaining social relations, taking care of self, etc. would indicate the need of professional help.
So basically, what we mean to say is that normality and abnormality are not two different sets of behaviours. They lie on the same continuum. What makes a behavior normal and deviant would depend on the analysis of the behaviour based on the above-mentioned factors and many others. For example- if someone complains of crying it naturally doesn’t seem deviant unless we analyze the behavior some more. These are few factors used in the clinical judgment of a behavior and each of these factors is not as simple as they seem to be. Judgments regarding which behavior is deviant and which is not will vary considerably from situation to situation, from person to person and from culture to culture. Each of these factors can influence judgments about deviancy and mental health issues but each of these factors can influence different people in different ways. No single factor would be an adequate basis for judgment.