Topic > Psychological disorders: 6.5 vs 93.5 - 813

Like what Myers says in his psychology book, "People are fascinated by the exceptional, the unusual, the abnormal" (Myers 2013). This statement presented in the book is ultimately true. People study people, intentional or unintentional. The more an individual is "different" from society, the more he stands out and is considered an outcast by the rest of society. Those who suffer from ailments are different, although they cannot help themselves and should not be isolated, but they are. According to the book, 450 million people worldwide suffer from mental or behavioral disorders, or approximately 6.5% of the population (Meyers 2013). This seems strange to me. 6.5 is not such a small percentage, hence why 93.5% of the rest of the world's population gets to judge the rest of the world's citizens. Since there are three aspects that contribute to a psychological disorder: biological, psychological and socio-cultural, it is difficult to believe that we are not bringing these disorders on ourselves. Even after we as humans classify other “imperfect” individuals into the “broken” column, we divide them from there again into categories that better align those who are similar. Anxiety, mood, schizophrenia and numerous other categories are the labels under which we classify them. In the book, anxiety is divided into five groups: generalized anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. (Myers 2013). Anxiety disorders appear to have a common social tendency or a more focused inner self. These disorders to me resemble the way we see the world. Each of the disorders listed above tends to be a mental loop or error in human code. It's not that these... middle of paper... come from the 6.5%, it's surprising how normals behave with abnormals. It's almost as if normal people think that abnormals are contagious, see them as sick, and want to try to cure them so that the disease can't spread and the sick individual can be like the rest of society. This world is imperfect and full of human errors, and until we look in the mirror to point out/fix our own cracks in our lives, we shouldn't be so quick to pass judgment on others. In Myers' textbook he found a quote from T. H. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics that I think is actually better than any other word I could try to come up with to explain how the world is. “One of the unforgivable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to walk around without a label. The world treats such a person as the police treats an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control” (Myers 2013).