New SAT Questions To Probe MIQ – (Mental Illness Quotient)
For decades, mental health professionals have reminded anyone willing to listen that infirmities of the mind are underrepresented in popular culture. They point to a paucity of pithy portrayals in film, literature, television, puppet shows, and motivational seminars. How, they ask, will maladies of irrationality ever shed their stigma, (to say nothing of the cloudy cloaks of ignorance surrounding them), until awareness, like sunlight succeeding a deluge, warms the landscape?
A handful of well-known advocacy groups; YABA (Young American Bipolar Association), DABA (Deranged American Benevolent Association), and DEW (West End Dyslexics), have lobbied tenaciously to insinuate mental health awareness into all aspects of our culture, if culture is really the right word. Recently they scored a major hit in that universally feared arbiter of societal acceptability, the SAT.
SAT Test to Include Questions on Mental Illness
It has long been observed that SAT tests do more than measure rational prowess; they also reinforce social values, beliefs, and assumptions. With this in mind, rambunctious, radical rapscallions at YABA petitioned College Board program designers and administrators to include questions demanding at least a rudimentary understanding of mental illness in next year’s SAT test. As luck would have it, Funny In The Head researchers got their hands on an advanced copy, and we are able to share it with you now.
Here are just a few of the multiple-choice, complex reasoning questions slated to appear in SAT 2013. Note that each one demands not merely the ability to identify common forms of mental illness, but also sufficient comprehension to understand them in context.
1. Malignant Narcissism is to Peter Pan Syndrome as…
a.) A duck-billed platypus is to a beaver
b.) Ernest Hemingway is to F. Scott Fitzgerald
c). The hokey pokey is to the mambo
d.) All of the above
Correct answer is D.
2. Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (MBPS) is to Compulsive Gambling as…
a.) A trolley car is to a Segway
b.) A duck-billed platypus is to a Tasmanian devil
c.) The national debt is to global warming
d.) All of the above
Correct answer is D.
3. Attention Deficit Disorder is to Sex and Love Addiction as…
a.) The Hindenburg disaster is to Lady Gaga
b.) Technophilia is to devolution
c.) A duck-billed platypus is to a talking gecko
d.) All of the above
Correct answer is D.
4. Asperger's Syndrome is to Pathological Xenophobia as…
a.) A fork is to a spoon
b.) Hang-gliding is to safe cracking
c.) Astrology is to juggling
d.) All of the above
Correct answer is D.
And that, dear readers, is only the beginning! Study hard!
APA Reference
McHarg, A.
(2012, May 3). New SAT Questions To Probe MIQ – (Mental Illness Quotient), HealthyPlace. Retrieved
on 2024, November 15 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/funnyinthehead/2012/05/new-sat-questions-to-probe-miq-mental-illness-quotient
Author: Alistair McHarg
Thanks for reading - and especially for writing! Hope to see you again soon.
Ahh, the infamous SAT. Nice to see some mental health questions on it. I especially enjoy one of the answers to question 3-the Hindenburg disaster is to Lady Gaga:)
Hi! Thanks for reading, and especially for writing. (I confess that when I thought of that one I laughed out loud!) Cheers, Alistair