Who decides that a particular behavior pattern is a psychological problem?
This is a complicated scientific process that is made confusing by media hype and by professionals who sometimes present theories and ideas as if they are facts. First, let’s explain how a psychological problem is defined and studied, and then we can see how the media, and some professionals, distort this process. Defining a psychological problem begins with individual psychologists who notice some similarities in the problems, or symptoms, presented by several clients. If these psychologists do not think that the cluster of symptoms fits any current psychological problem, they will start to collect data to try to determine if there is evidence of a new psychological problem. Those psychologists talk about their findings to other professionals, and may write a professional paper describing their “anecdotal” evidence for a new category of psychological problem. Anecdotal comes from the word anecdote, which is a short story. What they are reporting is not research, it is their story abou
