What is atypical behaviour?

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What is atypical behaviour?

In what ways is behaviour classified as being atypical or abnormal?

This essay is going to look at ways behaviour is classed as atypical and discuss difficulties with classifying behaviour in this way. To do this it will examine the fine line between normality and abnormality to assess if it’s as easy as it sounds to define the two.

In 1980 a new system of diagnosis developed, this was known as DSM-III, which was short for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder.

This was revised to DSM-IIIR in 1987, this new system aimed to address the many weaknesses of previous classification systems such as Kraepelin’s system (1913); his system was based on psychoses and neuroses. Psychoses are disorders, which involve a lack of contact with reality, i.e. hallucination, and neuroses are disorders in which the person as too much contact with reality, i.e. anxiety.

The DSM-IIIR try’s to gather information about the patient’s disorders by using five factors or axes: clinical syndromes, personality disorders, physical disorders, psychosocial stressors and adaptive functioning. (Hayes 1994)

Another system for diagnosis is ICD-10 (Clinical Coding Instruction Manual). This system uses a less number of categories to classify the disorders than the DSM-IIIR, however the two systems overlap and have several categories in common.

We are all individual people. We each interpret the world around us in different ways; we have our own thoughts, feelings and personal habits.

Along with different past histories, which may change our views on the lives we live. Some of us are so different to the point we may be regarded as eccentric.

(Hayes 1994)

Atypical behaviour is behaviour that is uncommon. The social conformity approach to defining atypical or abnormal behaviour is, that it is behaviour that does not conform to societies expectations.

It is not just what a person does, behaviour which is considered normal in one situation, may be considered outrageous or strange in another, even though it may involve the same group of people. For example, a group of people at a football match may act a certain way but if a person from that same group were to act the same way on a platform, waiting for his train for work, his colleague would think it was abnormal behaviour and would probably advise his friend to seek help.

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This approach can lead to a form of social determinism, which means a person’s abnormality is defined in terms of their audience rather than in terms of what they are like as individuals.

Another example of the social conformity approach is homosexuality. This is abnormal not because it is statistically less common than heterosexuality but because heterosexuality represents societies ‘normal’ state of sexual relationships. From a religious/moral perspective, homosexuality might be judged as ‘bad’ or even ‘sinful’, while from a more biological/scientific perspective, it might be labelled ‘sick’ or even ‘perverse’.

(Hayes 1994)

Even if the majority of men and ...

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Summary This is a well written essay that explains in the writer's own words the difficulties around defining and diagnosing abnormal behaviour. Also the writer points out that societies' norms and values change over time and therefore their categorisation of what is 'normal' or 'abnormal' changes too. In order to improve the score it would be advisable to spend some time on discussing other approaches to this subject, eg. behavioural and cognitive models as well as alternatives to medical classifications of atypical behaviour. The writer could also have spent some time discussing labelling theory. Rating 3 *