The care for people with mental illness has a long and interesting history. Prior to the 19th century the care of the mentally challenged were in the hands of “mad doctors” and non-medical administrators who were running large asylums. The challenge this emerging field was faced with has to do with taking over the control of these asylums from these lay administrators and creating a credible medical foundation upon which mental health interventions will be built. One of the strategies used to achieve this is the rhetorical justification of the “professional project of psychiatry” the essence of which was captured by the following statements published in the Journal of Mental Science in 1858: “Insanity is purely disease of the brain. The …show more content…
In the 1950s during the so called ‘pharmacological revolution’ when some tranquilizes were in circulation there were cases when anxiolytics used for reduction of symptoms of anxiety, which are very addictive became ineffective after few weeks as it usually did, some practitioners would just increase the dose and many patients suffers disabling effect as a result (Pilgrim, 2009). There are also other medical remedies like psychosurgery and the use of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) that has also since then become means of intervention with a level of success and controversy.
Since the statement has been made until now several practitioners do not believe it and as a result have explored alternative method of diagnoses and interventions for mental health issues. This has led to the development of psychological interventions. Some practitioners believe that most causative factors of mental illnesses are environmental. These environmental factors interacting with some other risk factor (which could be biological) could be responsible for some mental illnesses (Brown, 2011). As a result of the above position many practitioners believe that while it may be necessary to use some medication in the treatment of mental illnesses that drugs alone cannot do the work. This has led to the development of several tools for psychological or therapeutic interventions. There are those however who take extreme position about
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.
Hippocrates was the first to recognize that mental illness was due to ‘disturbed physiology’ as opposed to ‘displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession’. It was not until about one thousand years later that the first place designated for the mentally ill came to be in 15th century Spain. Before the 15th century, it was largely up to individual’s families to care for them. By the 17th century, society was ‘often housing them with handicapped people, vagrants, and delinquents. Those considered insane are increasingly treated inhumanely, often chained to walls and kept in dungeons’. There are great strides for the medical treatments for the mentally
As you will see in this paper, mental illness has been a serious situation for many years. Over the years, there have been different thoughts relating to the causes of mental illness including what the actual situation is and observance of how to treat the mentally ill. This paper will inform you of three different historical periods: Colonial America, Depression & the New Deal and War & Prosperity in which an important aspect of mental health happened in each. I will include some religious and economic information for each period due to the relationship that religion and economy had to the way mental illness was viewed and treated in those periods.
The introduction of new psychotic drugs can provide better or more thorough care for the mentally ill. Creating options rather than one solution may have been believed to do greater good for the mentally ill community. Furthermore, the economic incentives involved as long term care was and continues to be at such a high cost. Community resources cost little to nothing for the federal Government to support. As well as releasing the mentally ill to their families, in any case those with minor illnesses. Additionally, a shift from treating chronic patients to treating acute ones would generate basic sense into the minds of many. This modification states through actions that
Furthermore, tremendous advances have been made in the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses in the recent decades. Nowadays, someone with a mental illness is treated with respect, just like every other person, because, in fact, everyone is equal. Society’s goals today are to treat and support the mentally ill individuals enough so they can live in
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.
Although about 450 million people in the world currently are suffering from a mental illness, many untreated, the topic still remains taboo in modern society (Mental Health). For years, people with mental illnesses have been shut away or institutionalized, and despite cultural progression in many areas, mental illnesses are still shamed and rarely brought to light outside of the psychiatric community. The many different forms in which mental illness can occur are incredibly prevalent in the world today, and there is a substantial debate about the way that they should be handled. Some people are of the opinion that mental illness is merely a variance in perception and that it either can be fixed through therapy or should not be treated at
Part one spans over the years 1750-1900, and elaborates on the developments of varying treatments that were administered to mental patients during this time. Whitaker writes of methods like dunking the patients in water, bloodletting, the tranquilizer
Ron Powers’s book No One Cares About Crazy People and Nassir Ghaemi ’s book First Rate Madness, both describe the backstory of mental health throughout history. Power’s book begins with Bedlam, to the method of moral treatment towards mentally ill patients, to presidents in America undertaking the role in acting health care. Ghaemi’s book focused on world leaders who suffered from mental illness. Those leaders made positive and negative impact on today's society and the treatment of medications that they underwent.
The treatments for these disorders were also often inhumane and cruel because some of these patients acted out due to not being in the right state of mind. During the 1920s there was no known effective medication for psychiatric patients and these were the early stages of publicly run psychiatric institutions/asylums. ”evidence abounds of inhumane treatments of the mentally ill throughout history. ”(Madeline R. Vann, MPH slide1/11)
For years, psychologists have been trying to understand how the human brain functions and thinks, especially when the person is mentally ill. The difficulties that erupted during the decades of research are what led to mental institutions and insane asylums. Given that the mental patients in these wards were misunderstood, they were treated immensely poor by the doctors and by society. Their treatments included lobotomies and Shock treatments. These institutions were given only positive propaganda, so finding out the truth about them was difficult.
The question to be addresses in this essay is the following: Should mentally ill people be forced into treatment? This paper will argue that people with mental disorders who are at risk to harming themselves and others should be forced into treatment. Those with mental disorders that cannot function appropriately with in society because of their illness are potential danger, but with treatment they can overcome the possibility. If left untreated great harm could occur to themselves and those around them. Over-time society has changed the way they viewed mentally ill people.
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
Today, mental illness has been the scapegoat for most crimes today. From mass shootings to bombings, most people have blamed mental illness for the cause of these crimes. Moreover, even some defense attorneys have even had cases in which they claimed their client had a mental illness in order to receive a lesser sentence. However, in order to truly understand mental illness, we must first look at the history of people studying the brain. The history of the study of the brain, psychology, dates back to ancient Greece. By using the scientific reasoning, Hippocrates speculated that human temperament can vary by a person's physical qualities, such as yellow bile or too much blood (Smith). Many philosophers during this time period might have only
If we reach that far back in psychiatric history it would appear as though mainstream psychiatry has actually come a long way. To gain insight in to all disciplines of study it’s critical to venture back in time to get a glimpse of its history. It’s necessary to study the roots in an effort to accurately extrapolate where things have been, where things are, and where the vision is directed for the future. Advancements in health care have unfolded through trial and error. These progressive improvements in patient care are profoundly swayed by public attitudes and medical theories. Since we have had such difficulty in finding our way out of the stigma mental illness maintains on today’s society, it is not surprising that psychiatry continues to lag behind other fields of medicine in terms of advancements.