[RonPrice]

CRIMINAL MINDS

Part 1:

Criminal Minds is an American police-procedural television program that premiered September 22, 2005 on CBS. That date was at the beginning of the spring season in Australia where I have lived now for 44 years after growing-up in Canada until the age of 27. Ten years after the inception of this popular series the program is still going strong in 2015. The series follows a team of profilers from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Virginia USA. The show differs from many procedural-dramas by focusing on profiling the criminal, called the unsub or unknown subject, rather than the crime itself.

You don't need to know who writes the scripts, or who produces, directs or stars in the show. But if you are curious, you can read about these aspects of the series at several internet sites. Viewers like myself certainly take an interest in the characters, and a brief run through several online information locations will bring you up-to-speed with who-is-who and the reception the program has received in the last decade.

Part 2:

I began to watch this series in my early 60s several years after taking a gradual retirement from FT, PT and casual-volunteer work in the years 1999 to 2005. By 1999 I had had 50 years of active community life: in schools and colleges, in volunteer communities like the Red Cross, the Lions Club, and the Baha'i Faith, and a type of wall-to-wall people-social-scene. I gradually reinvented myself as a writer and author in the years 1999 to 2005 and, in the next decade, I took on the roles of editor and researcher, online blogger and journalist, reader and scholar. My life-style was much more solitary and I liked it that way.

By the age of 60 I was watching more TV than I ever had in my life, an average of 2 hours/day. This was a lot for me more than TV than I had on a daily basis before the age of 55. My TV life began in 1951 with twenty-years off from 1957 to 1977 when I had no TV. By 2005 I had had 34 years of TV viewing under my belt. By 2020, when I will be 75, I will have had half a century of TV watching, approximately 30,000 hours, or 3.4 years.

After two to three decades of an anti-TV philosophy, a philosophy I acquired for several reasons from the 1950s through the 1980s, I am now a comfortable couch-potato, at least for two hours a day. The statistics on peoples' TV watching vary from about 2 hours/day to 7 hours/day in various developed countries depending on age and ethnicity, gender and employment. People like myself, the over 65s, tend to watch well over 5 hours every day--so say the stats.

Part 3:

In these years of my retirement, and now going through my 70s, I have developed a taste for the who-dun-its. I think it is the repetition and the familiar characters that are the significant factors in my viewing pleasure. It may, in fact, be part and parcel of my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) which is a pattern of behaviour that, in my case, goes back to early childhood before the age of 5. Watching who-dun-its is, for me, like watching the news every day at 7 pm, with the voice-over and the little snatches of information about events of the day ending with the sport and the weather. It's all very familiar and comforting to my psyche, an electric-electronic ritual aesthetic, calm and relaxing after a busy day.

I've been on a cocktail of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medication for several years now. I get 8 to 9 hours of sleep for 12 hours in bed every day. With 2 hours of TV and 2 to 4 hours in various domestic, family and social activities, I'm left with at least 6 to 8 hours to devote to my literary and intellectual pursuits.

Part 4:

Criminal Minds has attracted my interest for other reasons having to do with behaviour analysis. For over 50 years I have been studying human behaviour primarily through the social sciences but, more recently, through the window of the humanities and the several applied sciences relevant to the study of human activity.

Criminal Minds deals with criminal behaviour, but it is criminal behaviour, deviant behaviour as the sociologists call it, with mental illness often going hand-in-hand. While not all deviants are considered mentally ill, almost all mentally-ill persons are considered deviant in some respects since mental illness is not considered "normal". When studying deviance sociologists often study mental illness. There are three main frameworks found in the field of sociological theory which deal with mental health issues. Each of these frameworks, paradigms or theoretical approaches, regard mental illness a little differently; however they all look to the social systems in which mental illness is defined, identified, and treated.

Functionalists believe that by recognizing behavioural norms and values in a society, mental illness is quite simply a form of deviation from these norms. Symbolic interactionists, sociologists who espouse a second sociological theory, see mentally-ill persons not as "sick," but as victims of societal reactions to their behavior. Finally, conflict theorists, combined with labeling theorists, believe that the people in a society with the fewest resources are the most likely to be labeled mentally-ill. Women, racial minorities, and the poor all suffer higher rates of mental illness than groups with higher social and economic status. Research has consistently shown that middle and upper class people are more likely to receive some form of psychotherapy for their mental illness. Minorities and poorer individuals are more likely to only receive medication and physical rehabilitation, and not psychotherapy.1

Part 4.1:

Sociologists have two possible explanations for the link between social status and mental illness, says Ashley Crossman, a self-proclaimed expert in sociology.1 The first explanation emphasizes the stresses of being in a low-income group, being a racial minority, or being a woman in a sexist society. These groups experience stressors which contribute to higher rates of mental illness. Their harsher social environments are a threat to normal mental health. A second explanation argues that the same behavior that is labelled mentally- ill for some groups may be tolerated in other groups and so therefore not labelled as such.

If a homeless woman, for example, were to exhibit crazy, “deranged” behavior, she would be considered mentally-ill; whereas if a rich woman exhibited the same behavior, she might be seen as merely eccentric or charming. Women generally have higher rates of mental illness than men. Sociologists believe that this stems from the roles that women are forced to play in society. Poverty, unhappy marriages, physical and sexual abuse, the stresses of rearing children, and spending a lot of time doing housework all contribute to higher rates of mental illness for women.2

Part 5:

A recent research paper provided a conceptual overview of deviance and its implications for mental health and well-being. The study conceptualized and theorized deviance and mental health through sociological, biological, and psychological dimensions. All theories agreed that deviant behaviour begins in childhood and can manifest itself throughout the entire lifespan.

The deviation is from behaviour appropriate to the laws or norms and values of a particular society. This makes deviance to be relative, depending on the society and individual. Mental illness in general, and post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) in particular, so this paper argues, are affflictions that result in labelling deviants who are unable to cope. PTSD typically involves increased aggression and drug and alcohol abuse; it also involves anxiety, depression, insomnia, plus memory and cognitive impairments. PTSD is a type of mental disorder.

Part 5.1:

This paper recommends policymakers in collaboration with behavioural health specialists, like clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, should focus on developing and implementing preventive and reformative programmes of social learning. This can be done through role playing, behaviour modification, social support systems, and peer and group psychotherapy among other ways and means.3 -Ron Price with thanks to: 1Ashley Crossman, "Deviance and Mental Illness" at the online site: "about education"; 2Anthony Giddens, Introduction to Sociology, New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001; and M.L. Andersen, and H.F. Taylor, Sociology: The Essentials, Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009; and 3A. Nalah, I. Bala1, & D. Leku, "A Conceptual Overview of Deviance and Its Implications for Mental Health: a Bio-Psychosocial Perspective, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, V.2, N. 12, December 2013.

Part 6:

Abnormal psychology is a branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion and thought. These patterns may or may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder. There has traditionally been a divide between psychological and biological explanations. Clinical psychology is the applied field of psychology that seeks to assess, understand and treat psychological conditions in clinical practice. Psychopathology is a similar term to abnormal psychology, but the term carries with it the implication of an underlying pathology or disease process and, as such, is a term more commonly used in the medical specialty known as psychiatry.

Part 6.1:

There are several types of abnormality: (i) a statistical abnormality occurs when a certain behavior or characteristic is relevant to a low percentage of the population. However, this does not necessarily mean that such individuals are suffering from mental illness; for example, statistical abnormalities such as extreme wealth or attractiveness do not carry with them the imputation of mental-illness; (ii) a psychometric abnormality occurs when a certain behavior or characteristic differs from the population's normal dispersion; for example, having an IQ of 35 could be classified as abnormal, as the population average is 100. However, this does not specify a particular mental illness; (iii) deviant behavior is not always a sign of mental illness, as mental illness can occur without deviant behavior, and such behavior may occur in the absence of mental illness; and (iv) combinations. These abnormalities include distress, dysfunction, distorted psychological processes, inappropriate responses in given situations and causing or risking harm to oneself.

Part 6.2:

There are also two main approaches to the above abnormalities: (i) a somatogenic approach to abnormality sees abnormalities as a result of biological disorders in the brain. This approach has led to the development of radical biological treatments like a lobotomy; and (ii) a psychogenic approach sees abnormality as caused by psychological problems. There are three paradigms or theoretical fields that the psychogenic approach draws on: (a) psychoanalytic, (b) cathartic and/or hypnotic, and (c) humanistic psychology. All these treatments are derived from this psychogenic paradigm.1 -Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 7/3/'15.

The criminal mind which we see
from week to week examined by
profiling, an investigative tool
for investigators to predict the
characteristics of these unsubs.

This offender, criminal profiling,
criminal personality profiling, or
criminological profiling, or this
behavioral profiling, also called
criminal investigative analysis;
geographic profiling is another
method to profile an offender.
The term came into my life in
the 1990s as I was just about
to retire after some 50 years of
student life, & paid-employment.

The television shows: Law & Order,
Profiler, Criminal Intent in the '90s,
the television series Criminal Minds,
the film The Silence of the Lambs all
lent many names to what the FBI now
calls: criminal investigative analysis!!

Ron Price
7/3/'15.