Outline and evaluate attempts to define abnormality

Failure to function

The most common question against this is who actually judges if you are not functioning ‘normally’. We first need to conclude if this actually is the cause or the person may not just be suffering a personal distress. If it is due to personal distress then it will be seen as unwanted behaviour, not failure to function. On the flip side it could just be the case that, the person is not coping, but it not aware themselves. This could make others feel uncomfortable and be distressful to others.  People who have eating disorders or depression can attract more attention to themselves, especially if a person is transvestite. Transvestitism is amongst the list of mental disorders.

Deviation from ideal mental health

To have an ideal mental health, there is a list crated by Jahoda to refer to. According to the criteria, a lot of us in a sense are abnormal in one way or another. How many would you have to tick to be classed as normal and how many would you have to ruled off from to be classed as abnormal? Doctors use signs of health issues as a method of detecting physical illness. The question here is whether or not mental health could be assessed in the same way? So, if physical illnesses have physical causes then mirroring that, mental illnesses must also have a physical cause, but this isn’t the case as many do not.

Overall I would say that failure to function would be the closest, in my opinion, to defining abnormality, however the other two attempts still have good information to argue back. I would say failure to function because if someone is affected in their life by one thing or another they may get depressed. When this begins to set in more and more, it becomes obvious that it is messing with their daily routines, e.g. getting up in the morning and going to work etc. if they cannot cope with these simple tasks they may even admit themselves that their behaviour is abnormal and maybe they do need to seek treatment.