Mental Disorders Paper

"About 44 million people 18 and over suffer from a mental disorder " (Barbara L. Kass-Bartelmes, 2004). Mental illness and disorders affects many people in the world. One of the most challenging and can be difficult is to properly treat and diagnose an individual who is suffering from a mental disorder or abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior can occur or be defined as abnormal due to many different characteristics. These characteristics can be identified as abnormal due to what is consider as social norms in society, individuals bias, cultural beliefs, and finally basic human errors. This paper will look at different reasons as why determining abnormal behavior or mental disorder can be so difficult to properly diagnose. This paper will
What may be normal to one person and their culture may be disrespectful to another. For example, in America, eye contact is seen as confidence and a sign of honesty, but in some Asian cultures, it’s disrespectful. In very religious cultures a person who goes to church and began to speak in a different language and behave differently can be misdiagnose as someone who is suffering from a mental illness. However, someone who is very religious doesn't see this as a mental illness. They see it as God speaking and having a relationship with them. People have the tendency to believe that their cultural beliefs and way of doing things is the only or best way. They tend to overlook the values of other cultures, the things that are proper and improper and right and wrong in other countries. In the medical world especially surrounding mental illness this behavior and way of thinking can lead to wrongfully diagnosing an individual's behavior and actions as an mental illness. This can lead medical providers to mistreat and misdiagnose their patients for a mental disorder they may not really have or treating them for the wrong disorder leading to the patient getting worse or even causing detrimental harm to themselves or