Aasai

ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY

Abnormal psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the understanding of various causes, symptoms and treatment of mental health issues.It is a branch that studies unusual patterns of thoughts, behaviours and emotions that deviate from societal expectations and therefore may or may not be a mental health disorder.Mental health disorder refers to patterns of unusual behaviours, emotions and thoughts that cause significant distress or impairments.

In the study of abnormal psychology,there are various concepts that I need to shed light on.First and foremost, Abnormalities refers to unusual thoughts, behaviours and emotions that deviate from societal expectations.Diagnostic criteria on the other hand refers to the standardized measure used for diagnosis of mental health problems.There are various types of mental health disorders which affects the lives of individuals, groups and community as a whole psychologically.

Anxiety disorders are characterised by excessive panic attacks and avoidance of social interactions for example General Anxiety Disorder and phobias.Mood disorders are characterised by disturbances in the moods for example Bipolar disorder and depression.Personality disorders are characterised by ensuring patterns of thoughts, behaviours and emotions that deviate from societal expectations and they include schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorders and anti social personality disorders.

These mental health problems are caused by various factors.Biological factors are in the fore front as the main cause of mental health problems together with the environmental factors.Biological factors that cause mental disorders include damage of the brain structures.For example if the frontal lobes of the brain are altered with, brain functions such as self awareness and language skills will also be altered with and this can lead to schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a type of psychotic disorder.Psychotic disorders are characterised by the loss of contact with reality with schizophrenia being the main example.Schizophrenia comes from two words which are schizen and phrenia.Schizen refers to split while phrenia refers to mind.All combined together leads to "split mind".

Apart from the damage of frontal lobes, when the occipital lobe is damaged,there will be difficulty experienced with the sense of sight and this can contribute to personality disorder for example borderline personality disorder.Environmental factors contribute highly in the cause of mental health problems for example trauma that we experience in our day to day lives.Trauma refers to any painful or stressful events that we experience day in day out.Examples of traumas include accidents, violence,loss and grief and early childhood experiences like different types of abuses including emotional, physical, sexual and Neglectful parenting.

Psychological factors also leads to mental health disorders.Psychological factors refers to the patterns of emotions, personality and cognitions that contribute to our behaviour.They include, cognitive distortions , difficulty in the regulation of emotions and different types of ego defence mechanisms.Cognitive distortions leads to schizophrenia which falls under the category of psychotic disorders.Ineffective coping mechanisms for example projection of feelings and displacement of emotions can highly lead to mood disorders.

Diagnosis and treatment mental health disorders involve identifying the mental health disorder with the help of Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5.Thereafter, cognitive Behavioural therapy, psychodynamic therapy and medications such as antidepressants can be prescribed.