Understanding Mental

Health Issues
Human Behavior
• Human behavior, is personal and powerfully affecting. Who has not experienced irrational
thoughts or feelings?
• Most of us have known someone, a friend or a relative, whose behavior was upsetting or
difficult to understand, and we realize how frustrating it can be to try to understand and
help a person with psychological difficulties.
• Each of us has developed certain ways of thinking and talking about psychological
disorders, certain words and concepts that somehow seem to fit.
• It is important to recognize that how we chose to perceive/label or talk about a mental
health condition can either foster acceptance/awareness or lead to stigmatization.
Psychopathology more often than not has carried stigma for those struggling with any
mental health condition, enhancing the feeling of isolation instead of support.
Four characteristics of Stigma
More specifically, stigma has four characteristics:
1. A label is applied to a group of people that distinguishes them from others (e.g.,
“crazy”).
2. The label is linked to deviant or undesirable attributes by society (e.g., crazy
people are dangerous).
3. People with the label are seen as essentially different from those without the label,
contributing to an “us” versus “them” mentality (e.g., we are not like those crazy
people).
4. People with the label are discriminated against unfairly (e.g., a clinic for crazy
people can’t be built in our
neighborhood).
What classifies as a ‘disorder’?
The DSM-5 definition of mental disorder includes the following:
• The disorder occurs within the individual. It involves clinically significant
difficulties in thinking, feeling, or behaving.
• It usually involves personal distress of some sort, such as in social relationships
or occupational functioning.
• It involves dysfunction in psychological, developmental, and/or neurobiological
processes that support mental functioning.
• It is not a culturally specific reaction to an event (e.g., death of a loved one).
• It is not primarily a result of social deviance or conflict with society.
Disorders Develop through a Complex Set of
Influences Unique to Each Individual

• The influences on the development of almost all the form a complex web.
• In addition, each person who develops a disorder is unique and has a unique set of life
experiences. Because this complex web of influences interacts with the unique qualities
and experiences of each individual as a disorder develops, simple answers to questions
about the development of disorders are always wrong.
• Simplistic answers about the development of some disorders abound: Eating disorders
are the result of cultural pressure for girls to be thin; severe child abuse causes reactive
attachment disorder; conduct problems are caused by inadequate parenting.
• Although each of these statements may partly describe the development of a disorder in
some people, none of them fully explains the development of a disorder in any child.
Bronfenbrenner’s Model of Child Development
Because influences on childhood disorders can come from each of these levels, we must
consider the potential influences from each level when conceptualizing how a disorder
develops in a child.

For example, consider a child with a somatoform disorder, which is diagnosed when a child
has physical symptoms such as chronic stomach pains) that are not fully explained by a
medical condition (APA, 2000).

It may be important to consider the child’s genetic predisposition to physical symptoms and
any significant illnesses the child has experienced, the responses of the child’s parents and
teachers to his or her physical symptoms (microsystem), the availability of medical
services in the child’s community (exosystem), and the influences of beliefs about physical
and psychological symptoms in the child’s culture (macrosystem).
These influences can manifest in unique ways for
different individuals
• Consider several preschool-age girls who live in chaotic households and their home
environment influences them to believe that relationships are based on aggression and
power.
• In elementary school, some of these girls may become aggressive and bully other
children, and some may withdraw from other children. In high school, some of the
aggressive girls may gang up with other girls through which they can express their
aggression and dominance over others.
• Other aggressive girls may join athletic teams, and one might even be the first girl on her
school’s wrestling team and be seen in her school as a crusader for women’s rights.
• Some of the withdrawn girls may enter a series of relationships with boys in which they
are victimized. Others may find work in a nursery school for abused children, where their
quiet nature makes them effective teachers for frightened children.
When contemplating the adolescent behaviors of the girls just mentioned,
developmental psychopathologists might consider the following:
• The genetically influenced tendencies toward impulsivity that pushed some
girls toward aggression and the genetically influenced tendencies toward
anxious and fearful behavior that pushed others toward withdrawal.
• The different patterns of reinforcement the girls experienced for various
behaviors.
• The girls’ unconscious issues and how these issues influenced them at
different stages in their cognitive and emotional development. The extent to
which the girls’ behaviors played important roles in the functioning of their
families.
• How the girls’ temperaments matched the styles of their parents.
Some Examples of Mental Health Issues that
are mislabeled
• Anxiety Disorders
• Depression
• OCD
Anxiety disorders v/s worry/fear

Anxiety Fear/Worry
• Anxiety is defined as apprehension over • Fear is defined as a reaction to immediate
an anticipated problem. The anxiety danger. and fear is defined as a reaction to
disorders involve excessive amounts of immediate danger.
anxiety and fear. Anxiety brings about a • The term worry refers to the cognitive
physiological, cognitive and an emotional tendency to chew on a problem and to be
response and effects adjustment and unable to let go of it (Mennin, Heim-berg, &
functional capacities in multiple life Turk, 2004). Often, worry continues because a
domains. person cannot settle on a solution to the
problem.
• Most of us worry from time to time, but
• Excessive and uncontrollable worry can
the worries of people with anxiety develop into an anxiety disorder but within a
disorders are excessive, uncontrollable, normal range it can serve an adaptive function.
and long-lasting.
Depression v/s Sadness
Depression Sadness
• The cardinal symptoms of depression include
profound sadness and/or an inability to experience • Most of us experience sadness during our lives, and
pleasure. at one time or another. But most of these experiences
do not have the intensity and duration to be
• In depression, people often view things in a very diagnosable.
negative light, and they tend to lose hope. Initiative
may disappear. Social withdrawal is common; many • Symptoms of sadness may come and go.
prefer to sit alone and be silent. • Sadness is a state of unhappiness that usually comes
• Some people with depression neglect their on after loss. There are many kinds of loss, including
appearance. When people become utterly dejected the ending of a relationship, the passing of a loved
and hopeless, thoughts about suicide are common. one, or the ending of a job etc.

• Physical symptoms of depression are also common, • While sadness is an emotion, depression is a mental
including fatigue and low energy as well as physical health condition with a clinical diagnosis.
aches and pains. Symptoms of depression can include
many of the same ones as sadness. But depression
normally persists and includes more changes.
OCD V/S Perfectionism
OCD Perfectionism
• Repetitive, intrusive, uncontrollable thoughts urges • A character/psychological traits. The individual believes that
(obsessions). imperfections in self and/or others are unacceptable.

• Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that a person • Adaptive: goal-oriented, organized, determined, and exacting
standards. Maladaptive: unattainable expectations for self
feels compelled to perform (compulsions).
and/or others, fear of mistakes, and preoccupation regarding
• The behaviors or acts are excessive or unlikely to control.
prevent the dreaded event. • People with perfectionistic personalities tend to welcome the
• The thoughts or activities are time-consuming (e.g., orderliness it brings to their lives.
at least 1 hour per day) or cause clinically
significant distress or impairment.
• Individuals with OCD tend to recognize that
their thoughts and behaviors are problematic.
Food for thought
How is ADHD different from normative
inattention/hyperactivity?