Psychological Disorders Assignment

Here’s the link to a video surrounding psychological disorders as presented by Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema – a person of whom I’m a big fan of! She was a psychology professor at Yale University for many years and is well-published in the field. She spent a good bit of her career exploring depression and its impact on daily functioning. Here’s the link to the video, and keep in mind that it’s nearly an hour long:

https://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110/lecture-18

Your assignment is to watch Dr. Nolen’s lecture on psychological disorders and use her information to help you reflect on the following:

Often problems arise with labeling people’s psychological problems, especially with the stigma surrounding psychological disorders. Do you see our society making any progress with this, or do you think there will always be a stigma surrounding mental health problems? In your opinion, what can be done to help change all the misinformation which exists with psychological problems? Do you think the media has helped or hurt the efforts of the psychological community to help remove the stigma?

And lastly, one of the difficulties with treating psychological disorders is determining how problematic symptoms might be. For example, children are often taken to a therapist because their behavior is distressing to the parents. How do we know that it is the child’s behavior that is abnormal rather than a lack of parenting skills? How do you think the mental health community should address this dilemma?