Labeling

An Abnormal behavior is defined as a behavior that is a harmful dysfunction that is atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and unjustifiable.

An abnormal behavior becomes a psychological disorder if it persists over time and it becomes deviant, distressful, dysfunctional pattern of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.

There are a few problems that come when you label a person with an abnormal behavior. When you label them, you imply that that person has a deficiency and you see them as having a problem. Also, it gives them a label or a stigma and you interact with that person differently.

David Rosenhan did research and found that when you hear someone has a psychological disorder, you see everything they do as being because of the disorder.

What David Rosenhan did was that him and a few of his colleagues checked themselves into a mental hospital by faking a symptom. They said they heard voices. When they were admitted to the hospital, they stopped their behaviors and behaved "normally" again. They wanted to see if anyone would detect that they were sane. No one did. They were diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and they were discharged with paranoid schizophrenia in remission. He described that experience as dehumanizing. No body cared for them or contacted them or came to visit them.

David Rosenhan describes a mental hospital as a place of storage for people that others do not understand or want to be around and for people others have lost sympathy for. The staff only recognized the people as people with symptoms of psychological disorders. David Rosenhan decribes this people with what others would see as "normal" not someone just with the psychological disorder.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's important for a person to be diagnosed with the psychological disorder that they have so that they can be treated. I'm not entirely sure how that could be changed. I just think that it's wrong that once a person is "labeled" with a disorder, they become that disorder and that is all that people see about them.