Blog Post #12-Psychological Disorders

The book defines a psychological disorder as deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional behavior patterns. Just because someone acts "abornmally" does not mean that he or she necessarily has a psychological disorder. The book states that being different (deviant) from most other people in a culture is part of defining a psychological disorder. Another step in diagnosed a psychological disorder is identifying whether or not this problem causes the individual distress. The last part is if it makes you change your way of life; it makes you dysfunction. The example the book used was that you may have a fear of spiders, and it could make you deviant. However, if it doesn't impact your life, it is truly not a disorder.

Personally, I have never known someone with a psychological disorder. My stepmom, though, watches a certain soap opera (don't remember the name of it!) where a character is schizophrenic. The book describes schizophrenia as a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions. What I have gathered from this character is that she is kind of crazy. One part of her is a very caring, loving wife and mother. However, when the bad side of her creeps out she goes nuts. When she is her good self (oh, and the two people have different names, too) she really wants help and doesn't want to change into her other self, but it's something she really can't help. I would feel really helpless, and overall worthless, if I had this condition. I wouldn't really be able to control what I was doing or why I was doing it.

I think the most interesting thing I read in Chapter 14 was right in the beginning. On the bottom of page 594, it stated that homosexuality was once upon a time classified as an illness. That's crazy! I mean nowadays, it's truly just a way of life and you hear about it all of the time. It goes to show how the times truly do change. I think that it also shows we have opened up our hearts a little bit more to give, as a society, and not be so judgmental, although there still are some opposers out there. When the book then stated that a study showed that homosexuals do have a higher risk of having a psychological disorder, I can see why. They receive criticism for something they really can't help and they may suffer some horrid consequences because of this.