This is the last section of material.
We are going to talk about abnormal psychology. Abnormal psychology
is also known as psychopathology. We'll be talking about the issues that people
have with living
and we'll find out that it is not them, it's us.
We all have difficulties at times. Sometimes our difficulties are overwhelming
and sometimes we muddle through them. Sometimes people are aware of our suffering
and sometimes we suffer in silence and nobody knows what we go through.
And, some of us struggle more than others. Some of us have
more difficult life circumstances than others. And other ones have
fairly simplified or easy seemingly easy life circumstances.
But being a millionaire does not guarantee you a life of happiness.
They say money will not buy happiness.
As David Lee Roth says, "It will buy you yacht big enough to pull right up next to
happiness."
But it won't make you happy, it won't make you satisfied.
I'm going to use a lot of terminology on these slides where I'll use shorthand,
which I have already suggested to most of you that you learn how to create your
own shorthand in each class to facilitate note-taking
but when you see these, these particular terms come up you know what they mean.
History = HX
Diagnosis or disorder usually = D/O
TX, treatment or therapy
Sx, symptoms
Pt, Patient or CLT Client
Beh is behavior; little triangle means change, change
in a positive direction or negative direction depending on a lot of factors
change is a possibility.
What is abnormality?
What is it to be abnormal?
Is it bad to be abnormal? Is it wrong to be abnormal? Is there something
fundamentally unsound about abnormality? Well, abnormality can be thought of
in a lot of different ways as we will see.
Some people get paid a lot of money to be
abnormal, to be unusual, to be not what the norm is. The norm
is your average. It's a statistical concept in some ways.
So what are we looking at? One way we look at abnormality is deviation from the norms.
Deviation from the norm and now we are talking about normal distribution, right.
When we talk about personality characteristics of personality disorders,
it's not like people with personality disorders have
entirely unique and unseen and unheard of personalities,
they just tend to be more extreme on some traits than others,
less flexible than others. Statistically, it's outside the norm for personality
characteristics, right.
You look at intelligence, we've already talked about that, intelligence not being
a value
that we should measure human beings worth by, but just an ability to work with
information mentally
one could be very high on that ability or very low on that ability but most
people are
in the middle. They might lean one way or they might lean the other way.
But when you go far field of the mean then you are
abnormal because you're outside the normal curve, right?
That is a statistical concept. Sometimes that can be
not advantageous or detrimental to a person to be far outside the norm.
Other times we celebrate it, right?
Artistic people. Do you want your artistic people to do what all of us do
or do you want them to be different than the rest of us, right? We celebrate their art
because it's not what you see and do every day, right.
Athletics do you want a team of average players?
People get really upset when
their teams don't do well. They want all their players to be above average, don't they, right?
We can't all be above average by definition but you can recruit people
into certain subsets of populations that have
advantageous abilities that allow them to do stuff. Religious leaders,
leadership context, do you want any normal person to be
a president or do you want somebody who is highly qualified to do that in an
abnormal way? Somebody that is willing to dedicate or get most of their life away in
the service of other people,
right? We want people who are our leaders to have different kinds of qualities, not
normality, so to speak, but abnormality in a way that we
hope is positive. We also have leaders that are abnormal in other ways that aren't
so positive sometimes, right?
And that makes a problem for us as a society.
But it's interesting society has accepted standards - we call them norms.
I'll don't think that some people are crazy and other people aren't crazy. I told you
long time ago I started premise that we're all crazy
right, to some degree. We're not all evil
and we're certainly not all psychotic but we all have
eccentricities, we all have proclivities, we all have hang-ups and
issues, that we deal with as individuals that we don't show to everybody
but we suffer with or struggle with within ourselves.
We all have these things so to me it's not are you crazy, it's how crazy are you,
are you aware of your own issues,
and if you are aware of your own issues, are you willing to do anything about
them?
Because for the most part people are open to change, at least the humanistic
view is;
You can change. You can make a better life for yourself. You can
go through your struggles and come out a better person for having gone through
them,
right? So in this sense, in society
money counts. So
if you're rich, really rich, Howard Hughes was really rich,
They didn't send him to a mental institution. They called him eccentric.
So if you're really rich, you are eccentric. If you're poor, you're crazy, right?
That's that's a big difference in society. How people are treated as a
function of their affluence
or power because all of us are affected by being human.
But having more power or more money often times allows people to have more
leeway with what society will tolerate from them.
Leeway depends on the person, the individual circumstances, and ecetera, ecetera.
Suffering and distress. All people suffer.
So how's that a criteria? We all suffer to some degree at some point in our
lives, right.
Even living a perfect life, which what is that anyway, right?
But let's say we're materially comfortable, we're reasonably secure,
right. We don't fear for our lives we feel pretty confident that tomorrows
going to come and we will be alright. We'll
eat, we'll have a home, our family will be around and we lose people that we love,
right? That's part of living. It's a hard part of living and we will suffer as a result
because we care. To not care
is another kind of suffering, right? But most people care, whether they show it or not
and so when we talk about suffering and determining abnormality with in the
context of mental
health, we're talking about what's not usual.
Suffering to a more extreme degree or for a longer length of period,
in such a way that it causes difficulties for the person that they
themselves would rather not
have to deal with. They would like to feel less suffering,
less emotional pain, and that is
perfectly legitimate. It's not even noticeably present in some disorders. People
who are manic
or psychotic may not realize that they are psychotic,
right. They may not realize in their mania that they're engaging in
dangerous and risky behaviors. They may not
be aware of it, so they're not suffering. They feel,
in some cases, great, in some cases sufferings quite clear
in psychosis people are frightened, they're terrified
they're very, very upset. But in other cases when there's grandiosity of
a positive nature they think great things about themselves,
contrary to reality, they feel pretty good.
We talked about intellectual assessment
and what used to be called mental retardation is now called intellectual
disability.
But I know a lot of people who fit those categories meaning it's harder for them to
live
in this world because it's harder for them to understand concepts we take as
basic to survival
like being able to read, or compute mathematics, like paying bills,
holding jobs, and things of that nature. But they're perfectly happy people.
Alright, so they're not suffering but they might need help
to live an independent or supervised life.
So suffering and distress is individually relative
to you. How much are you suffering? How much distress do you feel?
Or, does it cause dysfunction?
So I might be perfectly happy in the sense that I I don't feel
upset or I don't feel emotional pain or turmoil
but if I have, let's say,
a test score and an intellectual assessment of about 60-65
and I don't really know how to read and I cant hold certain jobs because
I'm not qualified to hold them and I don't really understand how the bills get
paid or the taxes get done,
that's not going to allow me to live a perfectly independent life. The functioning that I'm
able to achieve is going be impaired by some degree:
from marginal to severe, depending on the issue, right?
So, it's not that the person is suffering or in distress but they need help
functioning.
For other people, intellect is fine, but the issues that they suffer from cause
dysfunction.
For example: schizophrenia. People
maintained on medication without psychotic episodes
are more or less like the rest of us, but if they deteriorate into psychosis,
whether or not they feel that as a suffering experience,
it certainly interferes with their ability to interact with others and
to hold jobs
and to function in ways that make it possible for them to live independently
at those times. Being treated,
they might return to that function. But other people
from less dramatic kinds of issues as schizophrenia
or bipolar 1, where you have this really rapid
and severe shift from consciousness, from reality-based to not necessarily
reality-based
and sometimes completely non reality-based experiences
things like anxiety can be debilitating.
You think about if you have a work presentation you need to give and you have
performance anxiety
and getting up in front of people just terrifies you and you have the
equivalent of a panic attack while you're supposed to do that
you might not be able to do well, you might not get a raise as a result of
that
inability at that time. Depression can become so bad for people
that otherwise would function normally they're suffering
and they're feeling distressed and can articulate it as such,
but they don't want to get out of bed necessarily, right? So they might miss work
a day or two and then having missed work a day or two, not wanting to
explain that to others it might make it really hard to go back.
And having these kinds of issues interfere with one's life
school, relationships, right?, work.
Various facets of our lives can be affected negatively by the
states of existence we might find ourselves in at
any given time in our life. Note that some companies are motivated to sell you
things.
I'm not anti-drug, don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-medication, don't get
me wrong. Some people hear what I say and they
draw that conclusion. I say be very careful
about your diagnosis to make sure it's accurate and then
try, if available,
and that's oftentimes the issue, talk therapy because there's no side effects to it.
It tends to be effective as I'll show you
because you shouldn't say, "Are you sure it's effective?" Yes, I am.
Science shows that this can be effective, as effective as medications,
and there's less relapse. But if I have someone that is suicidal,
literally suicidal, you think I'm gonna say, "Well, try talk therapy first."
No, No. Let's get medicated. Let's get everything we can to bring it to bear
on the case. Some people would prefer to use medication first because
therapy requires time and intensive effort,
overtime to achieve results, and sometimes the medications
will help you through the symptoms which is what you're suffering from anyway and
isn't that what you're after in some cases, relief from suffering?
And, if that works then that is awesome and should not be
short-changed, but in some cases you'll find that these are the only
options offered to people who are suffering, is medications.
And sometimes they're misdiagnosed and are given medications that are not really
appropriate
because the misdiagnosis leads to mistreatment.
And that's something you have got to be very careful of.
We won't go that deep in the diagnosis when we go through this material because
there's an introductory class, but be mindful.
When I went and sat in a waiting room at a facility
that I have people working at I just saw a little electronic device on the table.
I picked it up and it had a series of questions with
3 answers: never, sometimes, and often.
Or something to that effect. And it would ask me things like;
Do you ever feel fidgety?
Sometimes, I feel fidgety.
Do you ever have problems with concentration? Sometimes I have problems with concentration.
These answers are going to hardly ever be never because I'm a human being.
And after a series of these questions answering sometimes, I was then given a summary
statement at the end that says,
"You might have ADHD and you might want to talk to your doctor about medication."
Well, guess who manufactured the device and whose name was on the device. The manufacturers of the
medication that they were suggesting I might want to talk to my physician to take.
But, if I wasn't educated on these things,
right, if I didn't already know the criteria for ADHD
and know that I don't meet criteria for ADHD, I might be worried.
I might be concerned and I might go to my doctor, who will hopefully go through
a much more rigorous process than that.
But, having heard certain symptoms in the patient may be being convinced they have an
issue
might be inclined to make a diagnosis pretty quickly and prescribe medications
without supplemental treatment that my either correct the diagnosis
or provide other alternatives.