Question

For centuries, people have believed myths and misconceptions about psychological disorders and the people who suffer from them. Modern psychological research has allowed us to correct some of these misconceptions. As a result, many people have changed their ideas about mental and emotional disorders. Think of a common misconception you have observed in society or in your personal experience. How could information from research be used to change people's views of psychological disorders? How can this information help us to better understand people who experience mental and emotional disorders?

In a multi-paragraph essay, describe the misconception you observed and discuss how information from research could be used to change this misconception about psychological disorders and the people who suffer from them.

Answer 1

One most common misconception about psychological disorder is that, people who are mentally ill are either dangerous or not able to include in social gatherings.

Mental illness is a term covering a large class of disorders. There are only few disorders where the affected persons can be dangerous such as antisocial personality disorder or some subtypes of schizophrenia. On most cases, people who are mentally ill are harmless and they are certainly not contagious. So it is so much safer to interact with them than many other physical illnesses.

Aetiology is the major concern while conducting research in the field of psychological disorders. Aetiology refers to the causes of disorder. Mainly they are biological or organic, psycho social, psycho analytic, and environmental causes. In case of organic causes there will be some chemical imbalance inside nervous system, physiological abnormalities of brain and genetic factors such as a deformed gene that causes a particular psychological disorder. But there are many diseases occurring due to environmental factors such as stress, exposure to trauma, substance abuse, brain damage due to injury or accidents etc. Psycho social causal factors include lack of parental concern, social isolation, socially induces stress etc.

While the organic cause can only be treated with chemicals as medicine along with other therapy methods, psycho social causal factors should be dealt with interventions. Treating the ill people with empathy and including them as part of society are crucial parts of the intervention process. Many researches show the positive effect of family and social support in fast recovery of depression.

So, removing the misconception about psychological disorders is essential in our time because there are many who suffers because our lack of knowledge. Stigma of accepting the help is also a derivation of these misconceptions. In summary, mental illness is also a disorder where people can actually get better if we care about them. Helping the needy people is a sign of mentally healthy person. So give mentally ill people the care they need and contribute to improve mental health, both thiers and yours.