Essay about The Discrimination Against People with Schizoprenia in Japan

Diagnosing an individual with a mental illness balances on a fine line between giving a life-long label and misdiagnosing. Mental illness is best viewed on a continuum allowing for a varying degree of severity. In the field, mental health professionals are faced with determining what signifies the appropriateness of diagnosing a mental illness. A professional’s judgment is impacted by their personal perceptions and observations, societies views and norms, and the patient’s history. The film, “How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity” demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing those who are mentally ill from those seen as healthy ( ). I will explore my reactions and thoughts regarding the participants’ experience as well as the mental health professionals. Additionally, I will share how this information is applicable to my future career in the field of social work.

People with mental health issues have been viewed and treated in a variety of ways within western society throughout time. Historically if an individual displayed behaviours which disrupted their function in society and defied social norms they were viewed as lunatics, insane or even cursed (Cowan, 2008; Elder & Evans & Nizette, 2009). It is from these past issues that many people still have unreasonable thoughts about mental illness; their misconceptions have created unreasonable fears and negative attitudes toward those who experience it. This negativity brings for many the barriers of not only

Diagnosing an individual with a mental illness balances on a fine line between giving a life-long label and misdiagnosing. Mental illness is best viewed on a continuum, allowing for a varying degree of severity. In the field, mental health professionals are faced with determining what signifies the appropriateness of diagnosing a mental illness. A professional’s judgment is impacted by their personal perceptions and observations, societies views and norms, and the patient’s history. The film, “How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity” demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing those who are mentally ill from those seen as healthy ( ). I will explore my reactions and thoughts regarding the participants’ experience as well as the mental

Psychiatry and psychology have struggled in the past to contextualize the nature of mental illness. Through this struggle, mental illnesses and their symptoms have been used as a means of controlling deviance and pathologizing emotions felt by certain groups of people. Social, political, and historical factors create the boundaries of sanity and insanity in which hegemonic, institutional power control minority groups, however, the manner in which these boundaries manifest have shifted over time. Jonathan Metzl in his book The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease explores the manner in which mental illness is used by institutions to control deviance through his examination of how the anti-psychiatry movement, subsequence

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

Entering the taboo world of mental illness, stigmatized as the crazy and psychotic by decades of

An individual can psyche himself or herself on believing that a prescribed drug given from pharmaceutical doctors are making them feel better. Madness in today’s world can be covered up by those medications, unless everyone is brainwashed in believing that it can. In present society, medicine given to people to “treat” them for certain mental illnesses is normal to see. In the nineteenth century, people who suffered from mental madness had to deal with the insanity, such as depression or hearing voices, without any help. They had to go through the pain, while everyone else watched them, and those who had no problems judged them. In the past, a person was looked down on if someone else noticed problems with that individual. This created many people to try and hide their madness, so others would think they were normal. Those who believed they were safe from this psychological illness had not received any detrimental problem in their life to unleash it. Erik Larson’s novel, The Devil in the White City, foreshadows the characteristic of madness in many of the characters. Larson reveals in his novel that it does not matter what type of individual you are because everyone has some sort of madness inside of her or him, waiting to be revealed.

The body and behaviours are defined as normal and abnormal through ‘othering’, a conceived structure of ‘knowledge’. This piece of work will explore how those deemed mad were understood and managed.

Dramatic stories of people with mental health conditions appear pervasively in almost every media outlet, beginning generations ago, and continuing steadily in modern society. These themes--of violent madmen, hysterical witches, insane criminals, and every other generalization of the mentally ill--perpetuate the harmful misrepresentation and stigmatization of mental illness, which is a common element in modern everyday life. One of the greatest factors contributing to this situation today is the presence of said misconceptions in printed media--not just modern works, but also the appraised classics, such as William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. Even as centuries pass and contemporary society advances, it is evident that ultimately, as the reader analyzes both Macbeth and Frankenstein, definitive British literature strengthens the negative stigma surrounding mental health, as it similarly misrepresents the legitimate issues regarding mental illness.

“...Those who are afflicted act bizarrely, say strange things, withdraw from us, and may even try to hurt us. They are no longer the same person-they are mad! We don’t understand why they say and do what they do. We don’t understand the disease process. Rather than a steadily growing tumor, which we can understand, it is as if the person has lost control of his/her brain. How can we sympathize with a person who is possessed by unknown and unforeseen forces? How can we sympathize with a madman or a madwoman?” (Tartavosky) This quote was taken from the book Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, and Providers written by E. Fuller Torrey. The words of this quote are meaningful because the author does a good job of explaining just how mysterious Schizophrenia is. This mental illness can turn a normal person into a madman due to the loss of control of their own mind. The scary thing is, researchers are not sure exactly what causes it. Only about 1% of the population suffers from schizophrenia, yet more people are institutionalized by this disease than any other mental disorder. (Griggs) This paper will outline the causes, treatments, and case studies of schizophrenia.

There has been a significant shift in Japan's understandings of mental illness and those who are suffering from it that has been documented by ethnographers all over the world. Though there have been many different approaches to studying mental illness and its hosts, there is a clear and defined history on how the Japan and its people have dealt with or ignored the situation at hand. Four ethnographies that I felt really embodied characteristics that illuminate this historical shift in Japanese culture are "Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan" by Karen Nakamura, "Depression in Japan: Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress" written by Junko Kitanaka, Emily Martin's work entitled "Bipolar Expeditions: Mania & Depression in American Culture," and Chikako Ozawa-de Silva's work "Psychotherapy and

At this time many people who where considered ‘insane’ were free to roam about with the sane. This all changed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is when there was ‘an isolation of madness’ (Foucault, M, 1964). The insane were institutionalized or placed with prisoners. Instead there was modification created with the intent of reforming the mad. Foucault was cynical on this idea and stated that society was in fact becoming less human by locking the mad away, trying to shift their place in society (Foucault, M, 1964). This was a new outlook on an old problem, where he was in fact ‘making windows where there used to be walls’. He brought a new spin on the concept of the humanity of imprisoning and isolating the

The definition of madness is one that is widely controversial between societies and has changed greatly throughout the ages. Mikhail Epstein describes this state as the “loss of reason” (Epstein, 263). This suggests that the madman was perfectly reasonable beforehand, and that any person can easily lose their reason. However, psychiatrists of the nineteenth century had a different idea; that madness is an inherently female characteristic.

Subsequently, it has been argued by Goffman that the actual behaviour of the individual is less important than the [societal] response to the behaviour. All Societies create certain categories onto which they project their anxieties and madness is one of those categories. The manifestations of the social representation of madness are informed largely by one's fear of their own mental collapse. Goffman alleges that once people become labelled as mentally ill,

The lack of psychiatrists appears to be making India the leader in what might be a burgeoning trend in medical diagnostic technology worldwide. The U.S. is already making similar progress but from a different angle, given that America isn’t pressed by a dearth of psychologists to fill in any particular gap. Micah Mazurek, in fact, is a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Virginia, and she’s been laboring over a project in the Curry School of Education—a Virginia University