Failure to Function

• Behaviours that prevent someone from coping with everyday life
• Unable to maintain basic standards of nutrition or hygiene
• Cannot hold down a job or maintain relationships
• Rosenham and Seligman (1989) proposed signs that can be used to determine when someone isn’t coping

  • no longer conforms to standard impersonal rules (eye contact and personal space)
  • experiences severe personal distress
  • behaviour becomes irrational or dangerous to themselves or others
• Strengths

  • subjective experience of an individual
  • Judged on their own perception of their life and how they function
  • Measurable and can be seen
• Weaknesses

  • Difficult to assess distress
  • Although its subjective, they can still be judged as not suffering
  • based on self report so unreliable