Analysis Of The Book ' Psychward ' By Steven Seager

Making it difficult for patients to receive adequate health care for their psychological issues. From a nursing standpoint, this book was interesting and informative. It demonstrated that the legal and psychological health care systems need to be fixed. At the end of the story, Pete concluded that mental illness is a disease that his son must endure for the rest of his life. However, he will be there to help his son, and will never abandon Mike (Earley page 361).

Illness is one of the few experiences that all humans have in common and generally is met with empathy. However, people who suffer from mental illness are not privy to this treatment. For centuries, mental disorders have been demonized and stigmatized even in the modern era where humans have a much better understand of the mechanisms of the mind. Before the advent of psychiatry in the eighteenth-century people believed that mental illness was actually demonic possession resulting in the ostracization and murder of the mentally ill in the name of God. The Victorian era was met with a different view of mental illness, in that it was understood that it was a malady of the mind and people needed constant medical treatment, thus federally mandated asylums were created. Since mental illness was not understood there was a lot of misconceptions and fear surrounding the field. It is no surprise that the master of macabre and the creator of Horror, Edgar Allen Poe, decided to explore themes of mental illness in his stories. Poe’s most famous story about mental illness was The Fall of the House of Usher, where the main characters are plagued with an undisclosed mental malady. Through Poe’s use of point of view, style, tone, and tropes, he painted a perfect picture of the Victorian view of the mentally ill and the mind of the artist which was believed to be different faces of the same coin.

The short documentary Crooked Beauty, directed by Ken Paul Rosenthal, narrates Jacks Ashley McNamara’s experience in a psychiatric ward and how her time in the facility shapes her new appreciation for her mental illness. One controversial issue has been trying to identify the true cause of mental illness. On the one hand, most people may think mental illness is simply a biological disorder that can be cured with a combination of medication and doctors demanding appropriate behavior until it sticks in the patient’s mind. On the other, McNamara contends that mental illness is a misconception with a patient’s oversensitivity, where it is harder for the patient to ignore certain events than “normal” people, and their doctor’s textbook knowledge. In McNamara’s mental institution, the psychiatrists simply trap her in a padded room and prescribe many different pills to suppress her mental illness instead of embracing her differences or showing her how to use those differences to her advantage. In attempt to prevent those who are mentally ill from feeling the same anger and frustration she felt, she demands a change in the line psychiatric treatment when she says:

In the book, Crazy, by Pete Earley, provides a detailed overview of the mental health system in the United States, as it presents a first hand narrative of Earley’s family journey through the system. The author’s major premise and arguments, in the book, is to highlight the history of mental health, navigation through the judicial system with mental illness, the bureaucracy and policies of hospitals, society views on human rights and client safety, and the impact on the individual, family, and community. The content suggests that human service workers and public health workers should extend their professional lens to advocate for change in the mental health system in the United States.

In today’s society there is a greater awareness of mental illnesses. With this greater awareness one might assume that there would be a substantial increase in government involvement or funding in the area of mental illness treatment. Unfortunately this isn’t the case in the U.S. today. There are hundreds of thousands of people with mental illness that go untreated. These potential patients go untreated for many reasons. These reasons are discussed in the Time article “Mental Health Reform: What Would it Really Take.

“Americans increasingly associate mental illness with the potential for violence” said Rick Callahan in his study entitled More Americans Associating Mental Illness with Violence. These stereotypes are what propitiate inequality with people who suffer from mental diseases. Clare Nullis points out in her article World Health Organization Urges More Attention to Mental Health Problems that “One in four people in the world will be affected by mental health or brain disorders during their lives, but few of them will seek or receive help.” These diseases effect nearly 25% of the world population, and these stereotypes force these people to feel ashamed of their conditions. John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men demonstrates the 1930s problem of poverty and how places around the world neglect those who suffer from mental illness and pass judgment on them because of their disabilities.

exaggerating symptoms and stereotyping individuals with a mental disorder. For example, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho, in which man with schizophrenia murders guests in a hotel, influences viewers to believe that all individuals suffering from schizophrenia are dangerous. However, that is rarely the case (Polatis, 2014). Therefore, it is refreshing to find a movie that accurately portrays the true personality of and individual living with a mental illness. The movie Silver Linings Playbook chronicles the experiences of Pat Solitano, a man suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder who was recently released from a psychiatric facility. Although this paper focuses on Pat’s experiences, it is important to note that the film not only takes on the task of portraying bipolar disorder, but also mental illness in general with other major characters suffering from a mixture of psychological or personality disorders. The film opens with Pat at Karel Psychiatric Facility in Baltimore, Maryland. We later learn that Pat was institutionalized for nearly beating to death the man with whom he caught his wife Nikki cheating on him. The rest of the film details

In Brain on Fire, the readers gained insight on different the perspectives regarding mental illness from both Susannah Cahalan and the people in her life. From the author’s view, she considered the horror of individuals being misdiagnosed, due to the lack of knowledge the disease. In chapter 29, Dalmau’s Disease, Susannah questioned, “If it took so long for one of the best hospitals in the world to get to this step, how many other people were going untreated, diagnosed with a mental illness or condemned to a life in a nursing home or a psychiatric ward?” (p.151). Susannah mentioned how money and timing being factors contributing the fate of those misdiagnosed. With the lack of affordable treatments, children are often misdiagnosed with autism, as adults with schizophrenia (p.224).

The negative stigma of mental health has lightened slightly over the years, however, it has not rescinded entirely. People still have an unmanageable time admitting that they may have a mental disorder and that they require assistance. Human beings struggle with these hindrances openly and also hidden on a daily basis. Therefore, our civilization needs to remove the shame associated with the treatment of mental disorders and work on devising a progressive suitable mental healthcare plan in order to ensure that many live a healthy, happy, and prosperous

“Both the book and the movie are insightful views into societal problems such as stereotypes about the people who have mental disorders. But the film is largely out of date in terms of depicting hospital staff as manipulative or evil. From what I saw when I worked in a similar institution, mental hospitals are a calm, healing environments—as they should be” (Wind Goodfriend, 2012).

Whitaker wrote Mad in America (MIA) to understand why the prognosis for schizophrenics in America is significantly behind that of poorer nations such as India, Nigeria and Columbia (Whitaker, 2010, p. 227). MIA is a chronological history of the antecedents (bad science), behaviours (bad medicine) and consequences (mistreatment) concerning the treatment if the mentally ill in America from the period 1750 to present day. Following psychiatry’s transition into mainstream medicine after its disassociation from its pseudoscientific psychoanalytic origins (Goldman, 2002) with its adoption of the scientific approach to mental illness. This approach contends that mental illness is indicative of some sort of underlying biological disease (Gross, 2007,

Eight sane people were admitted into twelve different hospitals, where their diagnostic experiences would be part of the data of the first part of the article, while the rest will be devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions. The patients were all very different from each other, three were women and five were men. Among them were three psychologists, one psychology graduate, a pediatrician, a housewife, a psychiatrist, and a painter. The ones that were in the mental health field were given a different occupation in order to avoid special attentions that might be given by the staff, as a matter of courtesy or caution. No one knew about the presence of the pseudopatients and the nature of the program was not known to any of the hospital staff. The settings were different as well. The hospitals were in five different states on the West and East coasts. Some were considered old and shabby and some were

Savage Minds is a sociocultural anthropological blog who’s writing is meant to be accessible to the public. The authors vary between graduate students and anthropologists whose relevant discussions may be appreciated by those looking to read for leisure, as well as, anthropologist looking to stay up to date with their colleagues and the modern topics they are entertaining. I have chosen blog posts by Adam Fish and Nick Seaver. Adam Fish is a cultural anthropologist, a teacher and researcher at the Sociology Department of Lancaster University, UK. The blog posts I have chosen written by him are: “The genie is out of the bottle – it’s foolish to think encryption can now be banned” and “Interview: An anthropologist on Tiger Woods”. On the other hand, Nick Seaver is a PhD candidate in anthropology at UC Irvine. Conducting his research with developers of algorithmic music recommender systems in the US. The article I have chosen by him is: “Computers and Sociocultural Anthropology”, a logical tittle for an academic, researching computational system while striving for a doctoral degree in the field.

Understanding mental illness for the average person can be challenge or even unattainable. Unknown aspects from each individual illness grasps differing urges that are unrelated to the majority of people. The film industry, however, is used as a productive machine of creating empathetic relationships between its audience and the people being portray in the film. A combination of the film industry and the implementation of characters struggling with mental illness delivers a provoking message to an audience of people willing to learn the situations of all people. The movie A Beautiful Mind manages to fulfill the dramatic effects of a film and the realities within an individual suffering through mental illness.

For the book report I decided to read “New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis” by Sigmund Freud, I decided to read this book because when I think anything psychology Freud is the first one to pop into my head, I thought it would be interesting to hear about his thoughts and lectures from a book he wrote. The book was published by W.W. Norton & Company and it 253 pages long, James Strachey was the editor of the book. The book was published in 1933 roughly 15 years after the lectures were first given, the lectures Freud first delivered were between 1915 and 1917 at the Vienna Psychiatric Clinic . The first English translation of the book came out the same year and it was by W. J. H. Sprott. A year before the book came out the psychoanalytic publishing business had financial issues and began to fall, Freud decided to help them out and provided a new set of Introductory Lectures. Freud addresses in his book that these lectures are not for professional or clinical audiences they are just towards educated people that have an interest in psychoanalysis and all of its knowledge.