In this technological era, we still have no test like Any other test for example; blood test, urine test, etc, to classify a person as normal or abnormal. However there are four subjective criteria to classify behavior as normal or abnormal. We certainly can’t tag a person as abnormal however we can specify the behaviors which are abnormal. The four subjective criteria are under which are also known “The Four D’s”.
Deviance: every culture has specific norms and customs that describe how a person will dress, how a person will talk and how a person will behave. If an individual deviate from that norms and customs, he or she will be considered as Abnormal. If people cry over the death of someone and an individual laugh at that time, he or she will be tagged as abnormal as the action taken by him or her deviated from the culture standards.
Distress: if a person shows upset and unpleasant behaviour he or she might also be labelled as abnormal. If someone is extremely upset and he did not join any social gathering or subjected to major psychological disorders like depression, anxiety, that person will be labelled as abnormal.
Dysfunctional: abnormal behaviour causes dysfunction and the person does not care of own self. If an individual leave his family and quite his job and remain to be unproductive we might label that person as “Abnormal”.
Danger: when a person become danger for oneself, for family or society. A person may seem to be endangering himself by being least bothered about his diet and health and for others by his collection of arms and guns.
Above stated all criteria are used for diagnosing abnormality.
Do you have abnormal person in your family or surrounding?