Individual Differences in Mental Health Disorders and Diagnoses

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about individual differences in mental health disorders and diagnoses, focusing in particular on: (i) how a diagnosis can be considered reliable; (ii) the DSM-5 and ICD-10 as diagnostic manuals which assist in the reliability of a diagnosis; (iii) the four D’s used to assess whether a behaviour is abnormal being deviance, distress, dysfunction and danger; (iv) understanding deviance to mean behaviours which are viewed as unacceptable; (v) understanding dysfunction to mean behaviours which significantly interfere with everyday life; (vi) understanding distress to mean when negative feelings occur inappropriately or persistently; (vii) understanding danger to mean when behaviour(s) put either the individual or someone else at risk; (viii) understanding social norms as a means by which to recognise when a behaviour is abnormal; (ix) a critique of using social norms as an assessment of normality being that they differ across cultures and time periods; (x) some critiques of focusing on individual differences when considering abnormality, including that observers may lose sight of what is in common between people; (xi) Bradshaw’s case study of ‘Carol’, which examined the effectiveness of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) at treating schizophrenia in a young woman; (xii) a positivist view, which would use scientific evidence proposals to provide explanations for individual differences in mental health conditions; (xiii) an anti-positivist view, which states that people are all the same and that differences are derived from society treating them differently.

About the lecturer

Dr Cody Porter is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Dr Porter’s research interests are in information elicitation, lie detection and offending behaviour. Some of Dr Porter’s recent publications include ‘Implementing converged security risk management: Drivers, barriers, and facilitators’ (in press) and ‘Applying the asymmetric information management technique to insurance claims’ (2022).