Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

This article begins by discussing the history of mental illness, going as far back as the 1700s. It goes over professionals in the field, the incidence rate, and treatments, all of this from the different time periods throughout the United States. The author also makes a point to acknowledge the different perceptions there were in the past of mental

Sweeney Todd, previously known as Benjamin Barker, “the most accomplished barber in all of London”, is married to Lucy and has a daughter named Johanna. An evil judge named Turpin yearned for his wife, so his jealousy and greed resulted in the exile of Todd to Australia, for a crime he did not commit so that he could have Lucy to himself. Fifteen years later, Barker, now named Sweeney Todd to hide his identiy, returns with the help of a sailor named Anthony Hope. As he seeks revenge, he meets a pie shop owner named Mrs.Lovett whom later becomes his willing and loyal partner in crime. He is informed by her that her Lucy had poisoned herself and Johanna

In the Movie, American Psycho, Patrick Bateman demonstrate challenges to identify his unique type of personality theories. The purpose of this essay is to review a selected film as a Psychology student, and discuss it from a psychological perspective. Also in this paper providing a diagnosis for a character in the movie and discuss the behaviors that support the selected diagnosis, and to explain and discuss the mental illness depicted in the film.

In 1973, psychologist David Rosenhan published “On Being Sane in Insane Places” which documents the results of studies he and his confederates conducted at 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the United States. The studies were an examination into the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis methods. Rosenhan’s research focused on testing the hypothesis of whether or not psychiatrists and medical staff can distinguish the sane from the insane and if the characteristics that lead to diagnoses relate more to the patient or to the environment and context in which they’re being assessed. (Rosenhan, 1973) The study was divided into two main parts. Participant observations and comparative information studies were noted as well as they gave valuable insight into the treatment of psychiatric patients, conditions in psychiatric hospitals, and the effect that diagnostic labels had on how patients were perceived by staff. Ultimately, the study discovered that psychiatrists could not reliably distinguish the sane from the insane and insight was gained into how diagnostic labels and environmental context play a strong role in the perception of behavior.

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.

Susanna confronts this classification of BPD as she makes its imprecisions clear. She feels that the vagueness surrounding the ‘social contrariness’ and the ‘generally pessimistic outlook’ result in an unfair justification of BPD, as these behaviours are clearly not predictive of her adult life. She feels that there obviously should be more substantial medical indicators to this passage regarding BPD. There is only subjective content, resulting in inevitable confusion over true presence of insanity. Consequently, insanity can easily be confused with social non-conformity due to minor indicators in early life, which is otherwise categorized as simply being different as an adolescent.

Overall, Conditions in asylums today are drastically different than asylums in the 1800s due to the better understanding of mental illnesses. As time goes on and technology advances, society will continue to advance in it’s knowledge of mental

- The original question of the study was: ‘If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?’ but Rosenhan narrowed it down in order to make it easier to answer and less of a philosophical debate. ‘Do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which observers find them?’ The question was narrowed down to patients, referring to those declared unwell in mind by medical institutions, and wonders whether diagnoses are made based on the patients themselves or preconceived societal notions and the unique living situation within the hospital.

Evaluation and treatment of the mentally ill population has developed from confinement of the mad during colonial times, into the biomedical balancing of neurological impairment seen in these modern times. There were eras of mental health reform, medicalization, and deinstitutionalization sandwiched in between (Nies & McEwen, 2011). Regardless of the stage of understanding and development, communities have not been completely successful in dealing with and treating persons who are mentally unwell. Fortunately, treatment has become more compassionate; social and professional attitudes have morphed into more humanistic and

Clinical physicians can use the following six criteria to diagnose mental illness, the Context of behavior, Persistence of Behavior, Social Deviance, Subjective Distress, Psychological Handicap, and (or) Effect on functioning (Who’s Crazy Here, Anyway). If a patient could have psychosis, five out of the six criteria used would be, Social Deviance, Effect on Functioning, Context of Behaviour, Persistence of Behaviour, and Subjective Distress. Social Deviance would be used because individuals suffering from Psychosis can have hallucinations (http://toronto.cmha.ca/mental_health/early-psychosis-intervention/#.WNwzrzvys2w), hallucinations make mental illness evident (Who’s Crazy Here, Anyway). Individuals suffering from Psychosis can have increased confusion, anxiety, and (or) suspiciousness (http://toronto.cmha.ca/mental_health/early-psychosis-intervention/#.WNwzrzvys2w); this would come under the criteria of Effect on Functioning. If a person is too confused to function, to suspicious of the people around them, or is too anxious, this would hindrance in their ability to function can be diagnosed and linked to a mental illness (Hock, R.). Individuals with Psychosis have extreme mood swings (from happiness to anger), also they hate to be touched (YYYYY), these to conditions of their illness could cause them to react angrily to being touched. If a

By the 1800s, physicians were able to establish that mental illness was connected to a biological disorder and that it could be triggered by different stressors in the individual’s life. They were also able to determine that there was more than one type of mental illness. After this discovery, people started shifting from mental asylums to mental hospitals that would allow the patients to receive specialized treatment that would positively benefit them in accordance to the specific mental afflictions they suffered from. Then, a psychiatrist was assigned to the patient so they could try to identify the stressors in their patient’s life and establish resolutions to eliminate the stressors.

Growing up as a child, I always thought that any individual you displayed any behavior that didn’t seemed what we called “normal” should be institutionalized regardless of the diagnosis. Mental illness is an extensive term and can include some of the following, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression and stress, psychotic disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The diagnoses for the fake patients were schizophrenic psychosis for eight of them, and manic depressive psychosis for one. During their stays they were treated the same as the

In NURS 279, I had the privilege of caring for a patient in his late 20’s who had newly been diagnosed with schizophreniform disorder, after having a “break down”. The main symptoms he had experienced over the few months pre-hospitalization included delusions of religious grandiosity and audio/visual hallucinations and the reason it took months before hospitalization is because he was living out of province, away from his family and mostly in social isolation, though his parents noticed a change in behaviour over the phone calls they shared. He became my patient 2 weeks after his admission, at a point where he had accepted his diagnosis and had control over his symptoms in a controlled environment, however, was med noncompliant, as he

A work-up must include a thorough interview of patient with assessment of positive and negative symptoms. There are many rare medical causes that present as psychosis in children (Benjamin et al., 2013). Genetic syndromes, IEM, and autoimmune, neurological, endocrinological and nutritional disorders that can present with psychotic symptoms must also be considered (Giannitelli, 2017). Assessment must include thorough physical examination, lab studies including complete blood count, serum electrolytes and glucose, hepatic and renal function, thyroid stimulating hormone, syphilis test, prolactin levels, hepatitis C, vitamin B12 and folate, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and antinuclear antibodies are recommended. Urinalysis, urine and serum toxicology, and human immunodeficiency virus testing should be done if there are risk factors present (). (Find sep. citation)