Definitions of abnormality: deviation from ideal mental health - Psychopathology

Deviation from Ideal Mental Health:
This definition, unlike the others, looks at the criteria which makes a person ‘normal’ and determines if they’re ‘abnormal’ by how much they move away from the “ideal mental health”.

Jahoda (1958) suggested that we have a good mental health if we meet 8 criteria points, which include: having a realistic view of the world, having independence (autonomy), having the ability to cope with stress and acquiring ‘environmental mastery’. The less criteria points you meet, the more ‘abnormal’ you are considered.

Evaluation:

• Very few people actually meet all of Jahoda’s criteria points – those who do include the likes of Ghandi, who was widely considered to be a supreme human being. We cannot say this about all human beings, and therefore this definition is considered to be very unrealistic as it would mean that the majority of the population, using this definition, would be abnormal.

• Some of Jahoda’s criteria points are specific to Western-European cultures and therefore it can be argued that it is culture bound. For example, the emphasis on autonomy and personal achievement would be considered self-indulgent in much of the world because it emphasises the individual, rather than the family or the community. Therefore, it is argued that this is not a very accurate or generalisable measure of abnormality for collectivist societies - only individualist societies.

• The definition requires a subjective judgement of how many criteria need to be lacking in order to define someone as ‘abnormal’. For example, one individual might consider a not meeting two of the criteria points to be abnormal, whereas another would consider lacking 4 criteria points to be abnormal. This is a limitation because using subjective judgement in this way, decreases both the reliability (i.e., consistency) and the validity (i.e., accuracy) of this method of defining abnormality.

• A strength of this definition is the it covers a wide range of criteria for mental health – it covers all of the reasons someone would seek help from the mental health services and therefore could be argued to be the most holistic definition in explaining abnormalities.