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12.1 Psychological Disorder: What Makes a Behavior “Abnormal”?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Define “psychological disorder” and summarize the general causes of disorder.
- Explain why it is so difficult to define disorder, and how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) is used to make diagnoses. - Describe the stigma of psychological disorders and their impact on those who suffer from them.
The focus of the next two chapters is to many people the heart of psychology. This emphasis
on abnormal psychology—the application of psychological science to understanding and
treating mental disorders—is appropriate, as more psychologists are involved in the diagnosis
and treatment of psychological disorder than in any other endeavor, and these are probably the
most important tasks psychologists face. About 1 in every 4 Americans (or over 78 million
people) are affected by a psychological disorder during any one year (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, &
Walters, 2005), [1] and at least a half billion people are affected worldwide. The impact of mental
illness is particularly strong on people who are poorer, of lower socioeconomic class, and from
disadvantaged ethnic groups.
People with psychological disorders are also stigmatized by the people around them, resulting in
shame and embarrassment, as well as prejudice and discrimination against them. Thus the
understanding and treatment of psychological disorder has broad implications for the everyday
life of many people. Table 12.1 "One-Year Prevalence Rates for Psychological Disorders in the
United States, 2001–2003" shows the prevalence (i.e., the frequency of occurrence of a given
condition in a population at a given time) of some of the major psychological disorders in the
United States.