Defining Abnormality †Towards a definition Essay

The statistical approach is based on the idea that certain behaviours are statistically rare in the population. If you measure any type of human behaviour you should find that people with varying degrees of the behaviour are normally distributed around the mean. For example there are a lot of people who are of average height but few people who are very small. If we plot a graph of for example IQ scores, It is bell shaped. The majority of individuals are clustered around the mean (the curves highest point). The further you go away from the mean, the fewer people there are. Problems Desirability-some statistically infrequent behaviours, e.g. being a genius are desirable. Cut-off point-who decides at what point you are to be considered abnormal? Statistical Definitions-The Same standards or norms are not relevant to all social groups/ ages/cultures for example in terms of anxiety. Children have more irrational fears than adults. Deviation from social norms Social norms are behaviours that are desirable for both the individual and society as a whole. Deviance from social norms is both undesirable and abnormal. Most mentally Ill people do behave in a socially deviant way but this doesn’t mean that you can base clinical abnormality on this theory alone. Moral standards-social norms change over time and basing mental illness on deviation from social norms is dangerous. Context-for example, wearing few items of clothing on the beach is acceptable, on the high street it is not. Sub Cultures-for example in the Mormon religion it is acceptable to have several wives. In England that is a crime called bigamy Good/Bad-in some certain circumstances being socially deviant is a good thing for example in Nazi Germany people who were opposed to Nazism were socially deviant. Collectivistic cultures-cultures which emphasise the greater good of the community rather than focusing on individual achievement would not find the first three characteristics relevant. Difficult-most people would have difficulty fitting all these criteria at most times in their lives. Cultural relativism A limitation to all ways of defining abnormality is that no definition is relevant to all cultures. Also cultures definitions change over time. For example Homosexuality was considered to be a mental disease till the 80’s.