Читать книгу Introduction to Abnormal Child and Adolescent Psychology - Robert Weis - Страница 34

Jerome Wakefield (1992, 1997) offers an alternative, influential approach to defining abnormal behavior based on the notion of harmful dysfunction. According to this approach, a behavior is abnormal when two criteria are met. First, the person must show a dysfunction—that is, a failure of some evolutionarily selected internal mechanism to work in the correct manner. Second, the dysfunction must cause harm; it must limit the person’s life activities or threaten their health and well-being in some way (Widiger & Mullins-Sweatt, 2018).

To understand the two criteria, let’s look at an example from the field of medicine. Heart disease is a medical disorder because (1) it involves an abnormality in the functioning of the body’s circulatory system and (2) this underlying dysfunction can cause disability or death. Similarly, Wakefield argues that the harmful dysfunction criteria can be used to identify mental health problems. For example, depression is a disorder because (1) it involves an inability to effectively regulate one’s emotions and (2) this underlying dysfunction can cause impairment, distress, and self-harm (Wakefield, Lorenzo-Luaces, & Lee, 2018).

Review

 Professionals disagree about the best way to define abnormal behavior in children and differentiate it from normal childhood functioning.

 Three features of abnormality include (1) statistical deviation or infrequency, (2) disability or impairment, and (3) distress.

 Jerome Wakefield proposed the harmful dysfunction definition of abnormal behavior. A behavior is abnormal if it reflects an underlying dysfunction in a biological or psychological system and it causes disability or distress.