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Psychopathology - Coggle Diagram
Psychopathology
Abnormality
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AO3: Strengths
Global Assessment of Functioning scale (GAF): A continuous scale that allows clinicians to see the degree to which individuals are abnormal and thus, who needs psychiatric help
Observable behaviour: Allows judgments to be made by others on whether individuals are functioning properly. Easy to see these behaviours
Checklist: Checklist can be used to assess levels of abnormality. Easy to diagnose someone according to the features of personal dysfunction
AO3: Limitations
Abnormality vs disfunction: Abnormality is not always accompanied by disfunction. Some psychopaths can cause a lot of harm but still appear normal e.g: Harold Shipman
Normal abnormality: There are times where it's normal for people to suffer distress e.g: the passing of a loved one. Grieving is psychologically healthy thing to do to overcome the loss. The definition doesn't take this into account
Subjectivity of the features of dysfunction: Although GAF measures levels of functioning, behaviour from the individual's perspective is not considered. What is normal behaviour for an eccentric can be seen as abnormal behaviour for an introvert
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Statistical infrequency
Strengths
Objective: no value judgements are used as the definition of abnormality relies on real unbiased data
Evidence for assistance: Statistical evidence that a person has a mental disorder can be used to justify requests for psychiatric assistance
Clear guidelines: Objectivity involved in this process means that different mental healthcare workers can all view the same kind of behaviour in the same kind of way
Limitations
Where to draw the line: This approach relies on someone to decide the point where behaviour becomes statistically abnormal
Not all abnormal behaviours are infrequent: Some frequent 'normal' behaviours are actually abnormal. 10% of people will be chronically depressed as some point in their life. This suggests that depression is so common that it's not seen as abnormal under this definition
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Not all infrequent behaviours are abnormal: Highly intelligent people are statistically rare and therefore abnormal according to this definition
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