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Psychopathology is what goes wrong with the mind. It is distress related to mental processes and statistical deviations from the norm. Psychopathology is what clinicians treat and researchers research (quoted in Frances & Widiger, 2012). Psychopathology has many possible definitions because it does not exist in a vacuum—the context affects the definition. Common themes in possible definitions include distress, dysfunction, disability, and dyscontrol, but none of these quite capture the whole picture (Frances & Widiger, 2012). What if a person is not distressed, but their behavior is clearly maladaptive, for example someone with antisocial personality disorder who manipulates others to achieve their goals? Is this person not pathological? Of Such forces may lead to overdiagnosis or an “unintended medicalization of normality” that reduces the validity of the concept of psychopathology (Frances & Widiger, 2012). But physicians and clinicians operate with an understandable bias for making false positive diagnoses over false negatives, which is likely reflected in their definitions of disorder. Nowhere is that clearer than in Rosenhan’s 1973 study on the “sane in insane places.” Professionals are the ones defining psychopathology on a daily basis through diagnosis and treatment, and they are biased by setting (the institutions they work in) and prior diagnoses—once a patient had a label, they were stuck with it. As Rosenhan (1973) concluded, “Psychiatric diagnosis betrays little about the patient but much about the environment in which an observer finds Clark (2005) found three temperament dimensions that underlie both personality and psychopathology: negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and disinhibition. Her theory is that these temperaments differentiate during development, becoming specific traits, and that the sharing of these traits with certain environmental factors leads to specific personality-disorder associations. Her temperament dimensions bear a resemblance to factor analytic studies that have found DSM disorders to divide into two or three dimensions: negative affectivity (internalization), externalization (disinhibition), and psychotic experiences (Widiger & Samuel, 2005; Wright et al., 2013). Mood, anxiety, and many personality disorders map onto the negative affectivity dimension, while substance use and antisocial disorders map onto the externalization dimension (Widiger & Samuel,
Are psychopaths like Alice, “mad or bad?” (page 21). The question whether psychopaths are mentally ill or just a bad seed has caused much debate. Dr. Hare explains that the problem is not only labeling them mad or bad, but who deals with them. “Does the treatment or control of the psychopath rightly fall to mental health professionals or to the correctional system?” (page 21). Not only are professionals confused on how to classify psychopaths, but the media also creates confusion. Psychopath means mental illness and the media uses the word to classify someone as, “insane or crazy”, (page 22). Dr. Hare explains that even though psychopaths, “cannot be understood in terms of traditional views of mental illness”, they, “are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders…psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why.” (page 22). Most professionals use the term psychopath and sociopath as one in the same. Since DSM-III, antisocial personality disorder has been used in place of psychopath and sociopath. Philippe Pinel was the first psychiatrist describe a psychopath and Harvey Cleckley was one of the first successful publish a book describing a psychopath to the general public . Pinel used the term, “insanity without delirium”, (page 25). Cleckley wrote The Mask of Sanity, which influenced researchers in North America. Dr. Robert Hare explained that WWII was the first time clinicians felt a need to diagnosis people with psychopathy. Due to the draft, there was a need to weed out the people could disrupt or harm the military structure. Dr. Robert Hare realized how hard it was to identify a true psychopaths from rule breakers and developed the Psychopathy Checklist. This checklist is used world wide to help clinicians identify true
...us advances in this field, while we still consider it a stigma even to be referred to a psychiatrist. Mental illness is just another biological or sociological problem, which needs to be dealt with on time, before it’s too late, by a specialist.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is a book by Jon Ronson, where he investigates the idea of psychopathy and the many individuals involved. Psychopathy is defined as “a person who is mentally ill, who does not care about other people, and who is usually dangerous or violent.” Ronson visited mental health professionals and psychopaths in order to determine the right way to control the diagnosis of mental health disorders. Throughout the novel, Ronson focuses on three main themes, which are the definition of madness, unnecessary mental diagnoses and the problem with confirmation bias.
“On Being Sane in Insane Places”, by David Rosenhan, touched on topics in research within the field of abnormal psychology that should be explored. These particular subjects included both the diagnosis and the treatment of those with mental disorders, specifically he was trying to expose problems with the mental health system as a whole. However, the way his studies were conducted had flaws, especially in the essential features of research: ethics, reliability, and validity. Lacking in these features created studies that are untrustworthy sources of information and provides questionable conclusions.
Before beginning my argument I would like to clarify the current criteria for diagnosing mental illness. First, the patient must show “clinically significant detriment” (Gray 578). This could be shown by way of “distress (painful feelings) or impairment of functioning (interference with the ability to work, play, or get along with people” (578). Second, the distress must have “an internal source… in the person’s biology, mental structures (ways of perceiving, thinking, or feeling) or learned habits) – and not i...
As science has evolved, so have treatments for mental illnesses have over time. The medical model is described as the view that psychological disorders are medical diseases with a biological origin (King, 2010, pg. 413). Abnormal behavior that categorizes some disorders can be impacted by biological factors such as genes, psychological factors such as childhood experiences, and even sociocultural factors such as gender and race (King, 2010). Treatments such as psychosurgery (lobotomy) , drug therapy (pharmaceuticals), electroconclusive therapy, and psychoanalysis are used to treat a wide range of psychological disorders. Back then, the public’s negative views on mental illnesses also went as far to associate with the people who treated it; psychiatrists. “Nunnally (1961) found that the public evaluated professionals who treated mental disorders significantly more negatively than those who treat physical disorders,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). People back then didn’t see the point in “paying to be told that they were crazy”. However, in today’s society, it is now acceptable to seek help from psychiatric professionals; we are seeing more and more people seek mental health treatment. “In terms of facility-based records of utilization (Manderscheid and Henderson 1998), the data suggest that the rate of utilization of professional mental health services has at least doubled and maybe tripled, between the 1950’s and today,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). In the 1950’s, neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine were introduced to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. These drugs block a neurotransmitter called dopamine from getting to the brain, which in turn reduce schizophrenic symptoms, however there are some side effects such as substantial twitching of the neck, arms, and legs, and even dysphoria or lack of pleasure. (King, 2010, pg.
The Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire is a tool often used by professionals to assess a patient’s personality subtypes on a rating scale of 20 to 80. Under the higher order temperament factor Positive Emotionality (PEM) there are four trait scales. For the trait scale Well Being, John Wayne Gacy would score a 70. He was an upstanding member of his community, liked by his neighbors and coworkers, and would even attend children’s birthday parties and hospitals dressed as Pogo the Clown (Hickey, 2016). He had a cheerful disposition when facing the public, however, he only receives a 70 because he would, in fact, be subject to violent mood swings. For the trait scale Social Potency, Gacy receives a score of 80. He
Torgersen, S. (2009). The nature (and nurture) of personality disorders. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50(6), 624-632. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2009.00788.x
There are wide ranges of social issues affecting mood, thinking, and behavior. What is considered normal in the United States of America, may perhaps not be normal to another. Being diagnose mentally ill requires train professionals to evaluate a person state of mind. Being normal in the United States of America is conforming to a standard, and standards can change within societal standards. Up to now the DSM-V shows the exact symptoms of mental disorders and thoroughly explains the type of illness. Yet abnormal behavior treatment is not the same, professionals who’ve master therapy skills should be aware that their knowledge has affect to client’s treatment. When clients interact amongst counselors, clients can explain their life experiences,
We all have our own perception of psychiatric hospitals. Some people may see them as a terrifying experience, and others may see them as a way to help people who cannot keep their disorders under control. David Rosenhan's perception led him to a variety of questions. How could psychiatric hospitals know if a patient was insane or not? What is like to be a patient there? According to Rosenhans study, psychiatric hospitals have no way of truly knowing what patients are insane or not; they quickly jump to labeling and depersonalizing their patients instead of spending time with them to observe their personality.
Pseudopatients pretended to have symptoms of mental disorders and admitted to various mental hospitals. Rosenhan assumed that if pseudopatients were discovered to be normal and released from the hospitals, sanity could be distinguished from insanity and terms like “mental illness” and “manic-depressive” would be reliable. Surprisingly, all pseudopatients were admitted to the hospitals. Although the patients in the hospitals were able to “‘detect’ the pseudopatients’ sanity”, clinicians and nurses often attributed those normal behaviors to the labeled insanity (Rosenhan, p. 181). Rosenhan found “physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick … than a sick person healthy” (p. 181), and “behaviors that are stimulated by the environment are commonly misattributed to the patient’s disorder” (p. 182). Therefore, Rosenhan concluded the psychiatric diagnosis is not reliable, and “we cannot distinguish insanity from sanity” (p.
for too long, they can stop us from doing the things we want to and
“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by an inability to form human attachment, aggressive narcissism, and antisocial behavior defined by a constellation of affective, interpersonal and behavioral characteristics, most of which society views as pejorative” [1]. Some of these characteristics include irresponsibility, grandiosity, cunning, deceitfulness, selective impulsivity, sexual promiscuity, lack of empathy, etc. People who are psychopathic display not only antisocial behavior but also emotional impairment such as the lack of guilt. They are able to prey on others using their charm, deceit, violence or any other methods that allow them to get what they want. A strong feature of most of the behavior exhibited by individuals with psychopathy is that it is mostly instrumental in nature. They are extremely goal-oriented with interests in acquiring wealth, sexual opportunities and increased status.
Doward, J. (2013), Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist? The Observer 12 May.
This chapter focuses on David Rosenhan and his experiment on determining if psychologists can correctly diagnose patients in a hospital setting(sane vs insane). Rosenhan was inspired to embark on this experiment after hearing from his friend that many soldiers tried to avoid the Vietnam War draft by faking mental illnesses. This experiment was centered around Rosenhan and how he recruited eight of his friends as pseudopatients to take part in this experiment in where the pseudopatients faked their way into a hospital during the month of October. Before the experiment, the pseudopatients practiced faking symptoms and pretending to consume medications. Furthermore, all of the pseudopatients possessed the same symptom of pretending to hear a voice in their head making a “thud” sound, but once they enter the hospital, the voice disappears. The voice for each of the pseudopatients matches the sex of the patients themselves. When Rosenhan went to the