Defining Abnormality Paper This paper will be about the challenges in defining and classifying normal and abnormal behavior. There are several challenges that arisen when defining and classifying normal and abnormal behavior. The challenges that will be elaborated will be situational context, culture, and mind and body. Efforts to understand, clarify and control challenging behaviors can be found back to more than a few years. Influences can range from age and gender to culture and situational contexts. When bearing in mind the age of an individual, experts have their work cut out for them, anyone from any age group can experience from abnormal behaviors, this makes it challenging to make a diagnosis Certain cultures have what some would think of being odd or “abnormal” customs. Even with each of these concerns taken into account, mind, body, culture, and situational context, trying to determine if a person is displaying normal or abnormal behaviors can still be challenging. Many human behaviors can follow what is known as the normal curve. Looking at this bell-shaped curve, the majority of individuals are clustered around the highest point of the curve, which is known as the average. People who fall very far at either end of the normal curve might be considered "abnormal” (Sherry, K., N.d.).
Situational Context Situational context is a social situation, behavioral setting, or general circumstances in which an action takes place. If the situational context is not considered in determining a person’s behavior it will affect one’s judgment no matter if he or she is interested in understanding the current feelings of the person or his or her individual tendencies, but will do so differently depending on the question one is trying to answer (Lieberman, 2006). In determining if behavior is abnormal, in context; a few considerations have to be made. One such