Lesson Summary

One take away message from this lesson is that the concept of “abnormality” is highly diverse. You need to consider many different criteria and many different contextual factors when determining whether a behavior is “abnormal” or not. Also, there are many different ways of treating abnormal behavior of a clinical nature.

We’ll end this discussion of abnormality with one final distinction that you’ll need to know throughout the semester: the difference between “clinical” and “sub-clinical”. Sub-clinical or “normal” means that a person does not meet the formal criteria for a DSM-5 or ICD diagnosis; it’s possible for someone to be considered abnormal using various criteria from this chapter yet their issues can be sub-clinical in nature. Clinical means that an issue does meet a formal mental health diagnosis and is thus in need of treatment in some way. In Lesson 3 we will discuss certain assessment tools that are for a clinical population (such as mental health tests) and others that are for a sub-clinical population (such as personality and career tests). However, the next lesson involves key ethical and legal issues that all mental health professionals (and students) need to know.

Finally… beware of the “Medical Student Syndrome”! This is when you read through something like the DSM-5 and say, “Oh no that’s me! I have that!” Diagnosing yourself while taking this class can be very dangerous so please try to avoid doing so. However, feel free to diagnose people in your life like roommates, friends, or even pets. I like to bring the DSM-5 to family gatherings and then go through and check off the disorders that people have (just kidding, of course :p). 

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References

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