Human personality is a complex matter. Efforts have been dedicated to understanding the traits that individuals possess and how these traits are linked to mental disorders. The Big Five is among the results of the efforts to understand human personality. The Big Five are five scales for determining one’s personality. These scales seem rather arbitrary and therefore, they cannot be relied on for diagnosis.
Personally, I feel that the various personality dimensions in the Big Five are not comprehensive enough to cover all aspects of human personality. This raises questions about their validity and use in diagnosis. This is not to say that the dimensions are not important. I think that they can be used to gain a shallow understanding of human personality. I took an online test as part of my effort to determine my personality type. The results of this test were enlightening as they allowed me to understand how I am structured. I find that the program (test) is a responsible suggestion as it offers eye-opening insights that can be integrated into one’s life to make improvements. Tasked with the duty of drawing the disordered line on the score of an individual, I would have different lines for the different dimensions. For open-mindedness, the line would tend towards close-mindedness while the disordered line for conscientiousness would lean towards disorganized. As regards extraversion, I think that it would be unwise to draw a line. I feel that all scores on this dimension are acceptable as they reflect the variety of the human spirit. On the question of agreeableness, the line would be closer to disagreeable. I feel that disordered individuals tend to neglect the desires and needs of others. The line on the neuroticism dimension would be closer to the nervous/high-strung extreme.
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As part of this assignment and a personal desire to understand mental health, I read two articles. The first explored the link between the Big Five and mental health. This article details the results of a study in which the mental health of a subject pool drawn from the US was assessed and associations to the Big Five made. According to the findings, neuroticism and the socioeconomic status of the states from which the subjects hailed were responsible for variance in their emotional health (McMann, 2010). I feel that this finding is important for policy formulation. Since it was determined that there is a link between socioeconomic status and emotional health, concerned policy makers can implement strategies aimed at improving the socioeconomic conditions of the American people. This article makes it clear that the Big Five is not a mere theoretical framework; it has practical implications.
The second article that I examined investigated the link between the Big Five and psychiatric skeptism. The scholars behind this study required participants to determine if certain disorders were real or fake. They then compared the responses of the participants to two of the Big Five dimensions, openness to experience and agreeableness (Swami, Persaud & Furnham, 2011). They found that mental health literacy and psychiatric skepticism are among the factors that influenced the responses that the participants provided. I found this article to be informative as it enabled me to recognize the importance of the Big Five in understanding mental health conditions. Now I understand that the Big Five can be relied on as an effective tool for assessing human personality. However, I still feel that it is too theoretical to be used for clinical diagnosis.
References
McMann, S. J. H. (2010). Emotional Health and the Big Five Personality Factors at the
American State Level. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12, 547-560.
Swami, V., Persaud, R. & Furnham, A. (2011). The Recognition of Mental Health Disorders and
Its Association with Psychiatric Skepticism, Knowledge of Psychiatry, and the Big Five
Personality Factors: An Investigation using the Overclaiming Technique. Social
Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 46, 181-189.
