Question

List reasons why deviant behavior may not necessarily be symptomatic of mental illness

Answer 1

Answer.

Deviant behavior is behavior that violates the normative rules and expectations of society. In this sense,Crime is the prototype of deviance and violation of legal norms constitutes deviant behaviour. Although, deviance is commonly linked with psychopathology, mental illness, or personality dis-organization, it is conceptually different fro psychopathology. This is because:

behavior can be said to be deviant in the first, or normative, sense because it departs from the normative rules of some social system,whereas behavior is pathological because it proceeds from a sick, damaged, or defective personality. Thus every socially deviant person does not necessarily have a mental illness or a disorganised personality organisation.

Secondly, devience does not necessarily predict the presence of a mental illness. Instead, many mentally ill patients such as psychotics, or patients of major depressive disorder, agoraphobia may be extremely vulnerable to external threats and criticisms which only highlights that they may not be able to resist external pressures and norms. On the other hand, socila devience is marked by a more pronounced and explicit declaration of resistance to the pressure to conform to the social standards.