What Is Normal And Abnormal Behavior? “Normal” And “Abnormal”

A “normal person” can be considered many different things, depending on the viewpoint of the person. Often times one would consider a “normal person” to be a person without any sort of mental illness. A normal person is someone who adapts to the norms and standards of society.

What is normal? Normal, like the word love, has no true definition and will differ with every person you ask. Defined in the dictionary normal is “to conform to a particular standard” or “desired pattern”. I believe most people will say a normal person is one whom is free from defect, handicap and mental illness. Medicalization is a social process through which a previously normal human condition whether is be behavioral, physiological or emotional, becomes a medical problem in need of treatment. For example, not long ago being a shy person, “being reserved or having or showing nervousness or timidity in the company of other people”, was common and something most people experienced at some points in their lives. However, now shyness

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder often characterized by abnormal social behaviour and failure to recognize what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, auditory hallucinations, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and inactivity. A person with schizophrenia often hears voices, experiences delusions and hallucinations and may believe thoughts, feelings and actions are controlled or shared by someone else.

We and our practises change over time, which changes our normal day to a slightly more advanced norm. But how can we define normal if at always changes?

Abnormal behavior relates to the influence of psychological factors, biological factors as well as the social factors referring to inadequate relationships. In the face of diverse definition, abnormal behavior refers to the deviating from norm, which norm is the typical behavior or characteristic of the population. As such, Jim behavior is abnormal because it violates moral and conventional mores of the society (Violates societal standards), as such causing social discomfort to others. For instance, Jim fails to recognize the social cues in conversation thereby annoying other interlocutors. Jim is this case is behaving in a manner counterproductive to his own well being by

When we say normal, we take in to mind what we see on TV and in magazines. TV plays the biggest part in our country's depiction of normal because pretty much every household has a television. If you asked majority of Americans what their idea of a normal family was, they would probably describe something similar to my family; two married parents, a few children, living in a ranch style house, in a middle class neighborhood. Even though this is our idea of normal, it really doesn't seem that way anymore. TV families are changing, and fewer "normal" families can be seen on today's sitcoms. The divorce rate is always getting higher, more and more families are moving into brand new subdivisions, and getting away from the normal seems to be the thing to do these days. I think that the vision of "normal" is slowly changing, mainly because the middle-class families are changing. To me, middle-class and normal go hand in hand.

In simplest terms, normalcy is the state of being normal. Likewise, gender normalcy is what is expected from each gender in our society due to the gender roles that we have learned from the media, our ancestors, and our society as a whole; the media, however, is the main agent of gender normalcy.

When using this approach to define abnormality you would first have to consider what is normal behaviour for that particular culture otherwise a person could be incorrectly diagnosed as abnormal. Cultural differences are also a problem for the 'Failure to Function Adequately' definition of abnormality. This classification of abnormality involves a person who conforms to their 7 characteristics of the abnormal as having ill mental health. Examples of these characteristics are vividness, unconventionality and observer discomfort.

The term ‘abnormal’ means deviating from the average. Therefore, if we were to adopt a literal approach to defining abnormality, we would conclude that any rare behaviour or ability was abnormal. This, however, is not a useful way of defining abnormality as it doesn’t take into account whether or not the behaviour is desirable. There are three ways of defining abnormality; deviation from

According to the text, abnormality can be defined by comparing the behavior of the person in question to a set of criteria. This set of

By using the statistical infrequency definition, a person’s way of thinking or behaviour is classified as abnormal if it is statistically unusual amongst a selected society. With this definition it is very important to decide how statistically rare a behaviour or trait is before it is classified as abnormal. For example a person who has a higher IQ level than the society’s average is then classified as abnormal but contrary to this a person would be highly regarded for their intelligence, this is due to the method failing to identify the appeal of that certain trait (Cardwell, Clark and Meldrum, 2008).

Schizophrenia is a long term mental illness that will affect the way your mind works, changing your behavioural patterns. It affects usually people who are in there late teens to young adults. This is due to the natural changes in teen behaviour that happens to a teen when growing up such as sleep wake cycle, emotions and motivation. These are a normal phase that happens normally to a teen but if the get one more change which is symptoms of psychosis (hallucinations and delusions) then you will have pass the diagnosis for schizophrenia. With a natural phase in teenage/young adult life sharing so many similarities with the diagnosis of schizophrenia it is only certain that they are would be more susceptible. “There are many types of schizophrenia the three main types of schizophrenia are; the catatonic type, disorganised (hebephrenic) type and Paranoid type (Rethink,2014).” Catatonic schizophrenia is the rarest type; this usually is involved sharp movements (over activity to stillness), disorganised schizophrenia is more communication based, distorted behaviour makes it hard to communicate with other. Behaviour could also be seen as unwell or poor mannerism. Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common of all the schizophrenia type, these symptoms are usually just hallucinations with little to no effect on anything else.

For many years scientists, including doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists, have been interested in trying to understand human behaviour, in particular behaviour that is described as being ‘abnormal’. It is difficult to define ‘abnormal’ in terms of behaviour because there are many differing descriptions which have radically changed over the years. ‘Abnormal’ behaviour is widely categorised as being persistent and in a serious degree contrary to the continued wellbeing of the individual and/or the surrounding community. Cultural beliefs and expectations determine which behaviour patterns are deemed as being ‘abnormal’.

In all aspects of the lives we live, normal can not ever be defined as a single idea. If normal is such a thing at all, it is a subjective opinion and can only be defined on an individual level. Everything we interpret is relative to our upbringing and our environment. Not one person had the same upbringing or lived in the same environment as another person for even siblings who have lived together their whole lives have different nurturing experiences. The differentiation between normal and abnormal is a topic of much debate. The meaning of normality varies in many ways such as by person, time, place, situation, culture and set of values. Normality is usually seen as good and desirable by society and what society thinks while abnormality may be seen as bad or undesirable (Boundless).

Abnormal behavior is defined as a psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress or impairment in functioning and response that is not typical or culturally expected (Durand, 2005). There are