Iowa State’s Disability Awareness Week welcomed psychologist Robert F. Krueger who delivered a presentation on identifying abnormal human behavior on Wednesday, Oct. 16.

“Scientists today need to pursue empirical classification research to collect observations … about the nature of mental disorders,” Krueger said.

Mental disorders have traditionally been defined based on clinical authority like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health. Krueger said this political-like process is insufficient to diagnose people.

“It’s very frustrating to try to use this system when your trying to help people, and again that’s what this is what this is all about, helping them right?” Krueger said.

Krueger said he got involved in mental health is because there are very hindering conditions that interfere with people’s lives.

“This is a serious public health situation, and that’s an easy argument to make,” Krueger said. “These things have social costs that exceed the costs of many medical disorders.”

The classical manual approach is to define mental within 10 categories containing diagnosis such as compulsive, paranoid, narcissistic and antisocial. Krueger said these need to change from categories to dimensions defined by research.

“The problem is that when you try to make an accurate diagnosis what you end up with is people not fitting into these categories,” Krueger said.

Physicians need to get the most out of their clinical experiences by systemizing those clinical experiences, quantifying them, and really using empirical kinds of techniques to figure out how to define and organize mental illness, Krueger said.

“When questioning the [manual’s] paradigm the point isn’t that these disorders don’t exist, or that these are fictions or myths, or that people have made choices to be mentally ill,” Krueger said. “We need to recognize what’s being prescribed in there is a very serious problem. … We need to put the best science forward to figure out how its organized based on the data.”

Some ISU students agreed with what Krueger had to say about mental health.

“I thought it was weird that to be considered any aspect you could only really fit into one of those categories, when so often the research finds with mental disabilities [that] the presence of one brings the presence of a lot of others,” said Elisa McAfee, senior in psychology.

Tyler Cahill, sophomore in psychology, said he agrees that the process should be changed.

“It should be more in depth, like more in depth than just for obsessive compulsive disorder I have certain rituals I should have to do,” Cahill said.

Cahill said he enjoyed listening to Krueger speak.

“It was nice to see someone else’s perspective on it; he actually worked on it, and he doesn’t fully agree on how the [the manual] was formed,” Cahill said. “They’re still changing different parts of it, so it’s not so broad and more specific.”