Mental Health Psychology: Exploring Abnormality and Normality Concepts

This report delves into the core concepts of mental health psychology, specifically addressing the challenges of defining abnormality and normality. It examines statistical infrequency, a method used to identify abnormal behaviors based on their rarity within a population, and contrasts it with the concept of deviation from ideal mental health, which assesses behaviors against a set of criteria for optimal psychological well-being. The report highlights the complexities of these definitions and provides a nuanced understanding of how mental health professionals approach the classification of psychological disorders. It also includes references to support the arguments and concepts discussed. The content is provided by a student and is available on Desklib, a platform offering AI-powered study tools and resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to aid students in their academic pursuits.

Mental health psychology

Mental Health Psychology 1
Brainstorm
Spider diagram defining issues of abnormality/normality:
Issues in defining abnormality and normality
The abnormality and normality within the psychology undertake a various range of disorders
in the context of mental health. The issues identified by abnormality/normality are explained
below:
Statistical infrequency: A behaviour is deliberated abnormal if it is statistically rare or not
seen quite often in society. Statistical infrequency is a mathematical process describing
abnormality. It functions on the perception that abnormality should be constructed on the
irregularity, if it takes place seldom then it is abnormal. There are statistically certifiable
objectives which describe the presence/ absence of the mental health by the settlement of
persons with concern to mean and standard deviations. It controls the behaviour anticipated
within the ranges. The behaviour taking place in the population is normal whereas infrequent
behaviour tends to be abnormal (Sellbom and Bromberg, 2019).
Difficulties in
defining
abnormality and
normality
Culture
Age
Gender basis
Deviation from
ideal mental
health
Deviation
from social
norms
Statistical
infrequency

Mental Health Psychology 2
Deviation from ideal mental health: The deviation from the perfect mental health states to the
abnormal behaviour due to the absence of specific characteristics. There are 6 principles of
perfect mental health comprising an optimistic outlook of himself/herself and being resilient
to strain. So, if a person does not validate Jahoda’s criteria is described as abnormal. The
ideal mental health is deliberated positive as it moves away from concentrating completely on
mental illness (Schaefer, et al. 2017). The ideal mental health conditions comprise autonomy
and independence, the optimistic sight of self, competence for evolution and advancement,
the precise insight of authenticity, optimistic friendships and links and ecological mastery.
But it is quite impossible for any person to all the ideal characteristics at one time.

Mental Health Psychology 3
References
Schaefer, J.D., Caspi, A., Belsky, D.W., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Horwood, L.J., Hussong,
A., Ramrakha, S., Poulton, R. and Moffitt, T.E., 2017. Enduring mental health: prevalence
and prediction. Journal of abnormal psychology, 126(2), p.212.
Sellbom, M. and Bromberg, D.S., 2019. The Assessment and Diagnosis of “Mental
Abnormalities,” Personality Disorders, and Psychopathy in Sexually Violent Predator
Evaluations. In Sexually Violent Predators: A Clinical Science Handbook (pp. 153-165).
Springer, Cham.