Psychological abnormality means patterns of thoughts, emotions or behaviors that cause distress or dysfunction in daily life. Over time, our understanding and treatment has changed.

Surveys show that 43% of people still believe mental disorders are caused by individuals themselves and 35% believe they are result of sinful behavior. This indicates stigma and misunderstanding. However, over past 50 years, there have been major changes in how we understand and treat abnormal behaviors.

Treatment and care for people with severe disturbance

In 1950s, the discovery of psychotropic medication (drugs) that primarily affects brain and reduce symptoms of mental illness made a big impact. These includes anti-psychotic drugs used to reduce hallucinations, delusions, confused and distorted thinking. Antidepressants drugs used to lift mood of depressed people. Anti-anxiety drugs used to reduce tension and worry anxiety.

By using these medicines, many long-term hospital patients improved and able to leave institutions. This helped to started the policy of deinstitutionalization, where large number of patients were released from over-crowded public hospitals.

In today’s system, outpatient care has become the most common way of treating people with severe mental illness. Patients usually get medications with therapy sessions, social support, etc while living in their communities. When hospitalization is necessary, it is usually short-term. This shift has helped to reduce the isolation of patients but also create a new challenges such as the need for strong community resources and enough care.

Treatment for people with less severe disturbances

For people with moderate problems, the situation has improve even more. Since 1950s, outpatient therapy has become the main method of treatment. Originally, private psychotherapy was expensive and only available to the wealthy. But now with insurance coverage and community mental health centers, it is more accessible. Outpatient treatment covers a wide range such as anxiety, depression, marital or family conflicts, school or job stress, peer issues and other problems.

There are also specialized programs that focus on one type of problems, such as suicide prevention centers, substance abuse programs, phobia clinics, and sexually dysfunction programs.

Preventing disorders and promoting mental health

In recent years, psychology focused not only on treating mental disorders but also on preventing them. Prevention programs aim to reduce risk factors such as poverty, unemployment, child abuse, drug use etc. At the same time, these programs try to strengthen protective factors like good parenting, education, healthy lifestyle etc.

Alongside this, there is a growing interest in positive psychology. Positive psychology is the study of positive feelings such as optimism and happiness, positive trait like hard work and wisdom, positive abilities such as social skills and other talents. Unlike traditional psychology, which mostly studied illness, positive psychology explores the strengths and potentials of human beings. In therapy, this means helping people not just overcome illness but also build coping skills, live meaningful lives and improve relationships.

Multicultural Psychology

Another trend in modern psychology is the rise of multicultural psychology. Multicultural psychologists seek to understand how culture, race, ethnicity, gender and similar factors affect behavior, thought and how people of different culture, races, and genders may differ psychologically. For example, depression may be expressed through sadness in one culture but through physical symptoms in another. Multicultural psychology study these differences.

In short, today’s understanding and treatment of psychological abnormality are far more advanced than in the past. We have now more effective medication, out patient care, specialized programs and multicultural approaches.