For Jamal, learning about abnormal psychology has been fascinating. Despite what he’s read on the internet, Jamal now realizes that abnormal behavior isn’t
simply weird, nor does it necessarily indicate that a person has a mental illness. Given his own lived experiences with depression, Jamal now acknowledges
the fact that he, too, has suffered from varying degrees of mental illness throughout his life. In fact, for many years, Jamal has felt as though he should seek
mental health support to learn how to better manage his depression. Several of Jamal’s family members and friends have been diagnosed and treated by
mental health professionals for various psychological issues in the past, which has inspired a question: How does someone know that the time has come to
seek the therapeutic support of a mental health professional?
Jamal’s research led him to discover the Four D’s, a diagnostic paradigm that practitioners often use to conceptualize psychological disorders, which
consists of the following factors: distress, dysfunction, danger, and deviance. In his review of the literature, Jamal noted that the linkages between these
constructs aren’t always linear or mutual (e.g., a psychological problem may be considered dysfunctional, but not necessarily distressful; a psychological
problem may be considered distressful, but not necessarily deviant). As Jamal considered the importance of diagnostic accuracy in the treatment of
psychological disorders, he thought about his own mental health and wondered, “My depression may cause feelings of despair, but to what extent does it
actually impair my ability to function?”…
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