One of the attempts to define abnormality is through the use of statistical infrequency. This is when statistics can be used to define the norm for any group of people.

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One of the attempts to define abnormality is through the use of statistical infrequency. This is when statistics can be used to define the norm for any group of people. A norm is something that is regular or typical. If one is bale to define what is common, then one can also get an idea of what is not common i.e. abnormal. For example with a class of 10 students, 9 were right-handed; the one person that left-handed would be defined and classed as abnormal. This can be further illustrated through the use of a graph. In a normal distribution (Symmetrical bell-shaped curve) most people are in the central group clustered around the mean and the fewer people are at either extreme. This model is good as in some situations it is appropriate to use statistical measure to define abnormality. The statistical infrequency model works better for some human behaviours than others. For example, mental retardation is defined in terms of normal distribution. This shows that this attempt to define abnormality seems to show some success as it can be related to some behaviours experienced by human.

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On the other hand, there are some limitations with this attempt. Using statistical infrequency to define abnormality means that one is unable to distinguish between desirable and undesirable behaviours. Many abnormal behaviours are quite desirable according to the context of statistical infrequency. For example, very few people have an IQ over 150, but this is not considered undesirable and depression is quite common yet this is very undesirable. IN addition, it further needs to be determined where to separate normality from abnormality. In the case of depression, any symptoms experienced by around 80% of the population are thought to ...

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