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MODULE 43 PREVIEW
Mental health workers label behavior psychologically disordered when it is atypical, disturbing,
maladaptive, and unjustifiable. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-IV) provides an authoritative classification scheme. Although diagnostic labels may facilitate
communication and research, they can also bias our perception of people’s past and present behavior and
unfairly stigmatize them.
Survey results indicate that 32 percent of U.S. adults have experienced a psychological disorder.
Most show the first symptoms by early adulthood.
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
1. To define psychological disorders, and to discuss the controversy surrounding the use of diagnostic
labels.
2. To describe the prevalence of the different psychological disorders.
MODULE GUIDE
Introductory Exercise: Fact or Falsehood?
Project: Exploring Psychological Disorders on the Web
Videos: Discovering Psychology: Psychopathology; The World of Abnormal Psychology
Defining Psychological Disorders
1. Identify the criteria for judging whether behavior is psychologically disordered.
There is a fine and somewhat arbitrary line between normality and abnormality. A psychological
disorder is a harmful dysfunction in which behavior is judged atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and
unjustifiable.
Lecture: Defining Psychological Well-Being
Exercise: Defining Psychological Disorder
Projects: Encounters with a “Mentally Ill” Person; Normality and the Sexes
Understanding Psychological Disorders
2. Describe the medical model of psychological disorders, and discuss the bio-psycho-social
perspective offered by critics of this model.
The medical model assumes that psychological disorders are mental illnesses that need to be diagnosed
on the basis of their symptoms and cured through therapy. Critics argue that psychological disorders
may not reflect a deep internal problem but instead a growth-blocking difficulty in the person’s
environment, in the person’s current interpretation of events, or in the person’s bad habits and poor
social skills.
Psychologists who reject the “sickness” idea typically contend that all behavior arises from the
interaction of nature (genetic and physiological factors) and nurture (past and present experiences). The
bio-psycho-social perspective assumes that disorders are influenced by genetic factors, physiological
states, inner psychological dynamics, and social circumstances.
Lectures: Tourette Syndrome; Culture-Bound Disorders
Exercise: Multiple Causation
Video: Segment 33 of the Scientific American Frontiers Series, 2nd ed.
Transparency: 151 The Bio-Psycho-Social Perspective
Classifying Psychological Disorders and Labeling Psychological Disorders
3. Describe the aims of DSM-IV and discuss the potential dangers associated with the use of
diagnostic labels.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth
Edition), nicknamed DSM-IV, is the current authoritative scheme for classifying psychological
disorders. It assumes the medical model and groups some 400 psychological disorders and conditions
into 17 major categories of “mental disorder.”
DSM-IV describes disorders and their prevalence without presuming to explain their causes. Thus, the
once popular term neurosis is no longer a diagnostic category—because neurosis was Freud’s idea of the
process by which unconscious conflicts create anxiety. DSM-IV does, however, mention neurotic
disorders as a contrast to the more debilitating psychotic disorders. Many psychiatrists and psychologists
believe that a system for naming and describing psychological disorders facilitates treatment and
research.
PsychSim: Mystery Client
Video: Psychopathology—Diagnostic Vignettes Series
Diagnostic labels facilitate mental health professionals’ communications and research. However, critics
point out that labels also create preconceptions that bias our perceptions of people’s past and present
behavior and unfairly stigmatize them. Labels can also serve as self-fulfilling
prophecies.
Exercise: The Effects of Labeling
Video: Myths About Madness:Challenging Stigma and Changing Attitudes
Rates of Psychological Disorders
4. Describe the prevalence of various disorders and the timing of their onset.
A National Institute of Mental Health survey conducted during the 1980s revealed that 32 percent of
American adults had experienced a psychological disorder and that 20 percent had an active disorder.
The three most common were alcohol abuse or dependence, phobias, and mood disorders. Those who
experience a psychological disorder usually do so by early adulthood, with over 75 percent showing its
first symptoms by age 24.
Lecture: The Commonality of Psychological Disorders
Transparency: 157 Percentage of Americans Who Have Ever Experienced Psychological Disorders