Application of Psychological Disorders
For this assignment, you should carefully read the chapter on Psychological Disorders.  Then you should apply one of the psychological disorders you have read about to a character in a fictional movie, TV program, or book (comic book character is acceptable too) you have seen or read.  You can use any disorder discussed in the chapter (please don’t choose substance abuse disorders for this paper). You will type a one page summary of the character, to orient the reader (i.e., me) to what film/show/book you are reviewing. And then, you will then type a 3-4 page ‘analysis’ of this character using your knowledge from the chapter. Thus, the entire paper should be 4-5 pages total (not including the references page). Also, be sure to discuss why you believe the character has the disorder, the role of nature vs. nurture in this disorder’s development, AND how you think this character might be best helped as well as how you might help this person if it were a friend of yours. Keep in mind that I may not have seen the movie or TV show you are discussing, so please describe the character in enough depth that I will be able to understand your paper. Be creative and have fun analyzing! 
 
Your analysis of the character should come from information from at least 5 sources. Of those 5 sources,  THREE of them must be empirical journal articles. An empirical journal article reports on a study the researchers conducted. The article will have an abstract, a methods section, and a results section, so if you don’t see those headings in the article, then it’s NOT empirical.   Make sure to cite your sources throughout the paper and include a references page, or else it is plagiarism and you will receive a failing grade for the assignment.
 
Checklist (make sure that you include all of the following in your paper):
 

Decide what character and disorder you plan to discuss in your paper.

Find at least three empirical journal articles on your topic. Other professional sources may be used but don’t use too many websites. You should plan to have at least 5 total sources, with 3 of those being empirical journal articles.

Read about this disorder from these sources you’ve found.

Write a summary of the character, to orient the reader (i.e., me) to what film/show/book you are discussing.  No more than one page needed for this section.

Write about which characteristics he or she possesses that makes you think he/she has the specific disorder you are discussing. Include citations and info from at least 2 of your sources.

Write about whether you think this character was born with this disorder or developed it (nature vs. nurture) based on your readings.  Include citations and info from at least 2 of your sources.  This should be based on the research you found and not on your opinion. 

Write about how you think this character might be best helped.  Include citations from at least 2 of your sources and info from your sources.  

Write about whether you think this disorder was portrayed accurately or whether there was a lot of “Hollywood” in the movie? What aspects seemed more accurate and what aspects seemed less accurate? 

Write about how you might help a friend or loved one if they were struggling with this disorder. Remember you are not a therapist so you should not be giving advice or acting in this role. But what CAN you do to help this person? 

Include your APA style references page at the end (not included in the page length requirement).

  
Examples of disorders:
“Sybil”: dissociative identity disorder
“A Beautiful Mind”: Paranoid Schizophrenia
Monica on “Friends”: OCD

**MY TOPIC FOR THIS CONCEPT PAPER: Gender divisions of household labor: gendered tasks and power imbalances, men’s overlooked contributions to household**

Concept papers allow you to consider what other researchers or scholars have said about a topic or issue. When you begin working on your paper, make a list of four of five questions that youre interested in learning more about your topic. These questions will be a useful guide when you look for relevant research on your topic and begin writing your paper. but you must also include at least one research/scholarly materials (articles, books, book chapters, statistical reports, experimental results) from the library databases in your paper. Some good research databases for finding articles on gender and sexuality are: Worldcat, Gender Watch, One Search, Google Scholar, ERIC, JSTOR, PsycINFO, PROQUEST, Social Sciences, and Sociological Abstracts. Avoid doing searches primarily or only on Google. Resources such blogs, news articles and magazine articles may contain useful information on your topic, but they are largely just opinions of individuals or groups and dont have the rigorously analytical and statistical power of academic research. So, avoid blogs, news and magazine articles and instead look for research materials in our campus library databases (bolded above) to get better information and gain a deeper understanding of your topic.

Concept papers give you a chance to explore a topic of interest relating to gender and society in further depth. You may want to learn more about a topic in the readings or discussion threads. Or perhaps youve run across a recent event in the media or want to even explore media treatment of gender topics. Or maybe your topic hits closer to home on a personal level and you want to learn more about it. A list of topic suggestions follows these instructions if you need help brainstorming one. Of course, you can write on a topic that is not listed. If thats the case, let me know your topic in advance by sending me an email. Your papers will need to have some analytical, scholarly depth to themthat is, some kind of analysis that goes below the kind of cursory treatment that we find in magazine and newspaper articles. So, in order to do a good job in depth, you need to narrow your topic down to a specific inquiry and then find a couple of good research articles on them.

All papers must be (at least) 4 (full) pages in length, typed in Times New Roman (12 point) font, double-spaced, and have 1-inch borders (top/bottom, right/left). Note: This does not include the bibliography or works cited page added at the end of your papers.