Psychological disorders affect thoughts, emotions, and behavior, but not every unusual or difficult experience is a disorder. This lesson introduces the basic definition of psychological disorder and explains why context and impact matter.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) describes a psychological disorder, also called a mental disorder, as a syndrome involving a clinically significant disturbance in cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior. The disturbance reflects a dysfunction in psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning and is usually associated with significant distress or difficulty in important areas of life.
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Psychological disorder
A syndrome involving clinically significant disturbance in cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior, reflecting dysfunction in processes underlying mental functioning and usually associated with significant distress or difficulty in important areas of life.
Psychopathology
The study of psychological disorders, including their symptoms, causes, and treatment; the term can also refer to a disorder’s symptoms or manifestations.
Atypicality
Being statistically uncommon; this alone does not establish that a person has a psychological disorder.
Harmful dysfunction
Wakefield’s model requiring both dysfunction in an internal mechanism and harmful consequences for the person or others.
Thomas Szasz’s critique
Szasz argued that mental illness labels could stigmatize or control people and that some difficulties were problems in living.
Quiz questions
What was a central claim in Thomas Szasz’s critique of mental illness?Answer: Some mental-illness labels describe problems in living and can be used to control people who violate norms.
Why is violating a social norm not, by itself, evidence of a psychological disorder?Answer: Norms vary across cultures and time, so behavior needs interpretation in its cultural setting.
In Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction model, what two features are needed?Answer: An internal mechanism is dysfunctional, and its effects cause harm.
Janet has an extreme fear of spiders, avoids places where she expects to find them, and quits her job after seeing one at work. What makes this example fit the harmful dysfunction model?Answer: The fear suggests a dysfunctional process and substantially disrupts her life.
What effect did Szasz’s opposition to classifying same-sex attraction as illness contribute to?Answer: Challenges to pathologizing sexual orientation.
Based on Psychology 2e by Rose M. Spielman, William J. Jenkins, Marilyn D. Lovett (OpenStax), licensed CC BY 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.