Normal Vs. Abnormal Behavior

Normal Versus Abnormal Behavior

Abnormal behavior is a very broad term that psychologists broadly have defined as behavior that causes a person to experience distress that prevents him or her from functioning in their daily lives. Abnormal means "away from the norm"; abnormal could be anything different or set apart from what society considers the 'norm'.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Medical Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision or DSM-IV-TR was designed to help most professionals diagnose and classify abnormal behavior. DSM-IV-TR defines over 200 disorders, divided into 17 major categories and can help identify a specific problem a person is having. DSM-IV-TR helps professionals by painting a picture of the behavior that an individual is displaying. DSM-IV-TR allows communication between mental health professionals and describes behaviors that tend to occur together in a person.

Dissociative disorders are disorders that psychological dysfunctions characterized by the separation of different facets of a person's personality that are normally integrated and work together. Dissociative identity disorder is where a person displays two or more distinct personalities, identities or personality fragments. Dissociative amnesia is actual loss of memory, typically resulting from a psychological cause. Dissociative fugue is a form of amnesia in which a person leaves home and sometimes assumes a new identity; after some time a person will realize that he or she are in a strange place and may only recall his or her memory from the before the fugue state.