Definitions of Abnormality: Failure to Function Adequately (OCR A-Level Psychology): Revision Notes

4.1.2 Definitions of Abnormality: Failure to Function Adequately

When a person's mental state prevents them from doing expected everyday activities

• Cultural relativism. What may be seen as functioning adequately in one culture may not be adequate in another. This is likely to result in different diagnoses in different cultures.

• May be linked to other factors and not abnormality. E.g., failure to keep a job may be due to the economic situation not to psychopathology. Strength is it attempts to understand from patients perspective. Despite being hard to assess distress, the definition acknowledges that the experience of the pt's are important and represents a sensible threshold to identify when a person may need professtional help → useful for assessing abnormality.

Limitation is that it is quite similar to deviation from social norm. Both definitions overlap which makes it hard to see what abnormailty is defined by. For example, not having a job could be seen as failure to function but could also be seen as deviation from social norm. In addition Failure to function could be seen as deterministic as a person isnt able to make there own choices without being seen as failure. Living an alternate lifestyle may be interpreted as not complying to social norm → can create confusuion and hard to identify what is failure to function.