The first of Comer's 4 D's is deviance, which says that normal is relative to culture and just because a behavior is unusual does not mean that it is abnormal. The second D is distress, which simply means that the behavior of the person is causing pain. The third D is dysfunction, meaning that the person's behavior is preventing them from functioning on a day to day basis. And the fourth D is danger. This one is pretty clear-cut, it simply says that the behavior is abnormal if the person is a danger to him/her self or possibly others. Every one of these D's have problems with them but if I had to pick my favorite approach it would be the dysfunction approach . I like the idea of dysfunction because it seems to have less problems than the others. For example if someone is sent home excessively for coming to work drunk anyone can realize that their behavior is now making them dysfunctional in our society. But the thing that I don't like about dysfunction is the threshold problem which we talked about in class. Take the example that I just gave and consider a different person that is holding down their job and not coming to work drunk but is drunk from the time they get off to the time they wake up. Maybe because they can't cope with life but whatever their reason this person also has a problem but no one would ever know it because they are functioning in this society. That is sad to me because I am sure there are many people out there that seem to be functioning quite well but they are struggling so hard to do so and everyone thinks they are just fine. .
Assuming that psychological intervention simply means counseling for a diagnosis made, we should treat all behaviors which are causing a person to be dysfunctional because it is almost life threatening if a person cannot function in this society. And also all behaviors which are dangerous to oneself or to others because if we treat those who are dangerous and make them into "safe" people the world is a safer place as a whole.