Upload
joshua-osborne
View
225
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Chapter 8
Mental Disorder
Introduction
• About 50% of American adults suffer from a mental disorder during their lifetime
• Depression is "the common cold of mental illness"
• Stigma makes getting help difficult for many people
Popular Beliefs
• Myths:– mentally ill individuals are extremely weird– mental illness is hopeless– there is a sharp, clear distinction between
"mentally ill" and "mentally healthy" – mentally ill individuals are crazed, violent
people– people get more depressed in the winter
Types of Mental Disorder
• Biomedical view of mental illness: mental illness is similar to a physical disease– Accepted by American Psychiatric Association
• Psychological view: mental illness signals emotional problems of psychological origin
• Psychosis: loss of touch with reality
Types of Mental Disorder
– Manic-depressive disorder (or bipolar disorder): Fluctuating between 2 opposite extremes of mood - mania,
• Great elation, exuberance, and excitement), and depression (overwhelming despair)
– Schizophrenia: • Characterized by thinking and talking in
unconventional, illogical, or ambiguous ways; – Hallucinations (hearing and/or seeing things that do not
exist)
Types of Mental Disorder
• Neurosis: less severe than psychosis; little distortion of reality; – Ability to behave in normal way; – Neurotic symptoms prevent the sufferers
from being as happy as they want to be– Anxiety reaction:
• Generalized apprehension; becomes phobia when a specific object (or objects) causes anxiety
Types of Mental Disorder
–Obsessive compulsive disorder:
•Thoughts that interrupt train of thought; ritualistic action
Types of Mental Disorder
–Depression: feeling of sadness, dejection, and self-deprecation
–Psychophysiologic disorders:
• Includes hysteria, psychosomatic illness and conversion reaction
Types of Mental Disorder
• Personality disorder:
– General category of deviant behavior that cannot be diagnosed as psychotic or neurotic
– Blatant disregard for society's rules; thought to be linked to a lack of moral development –• Failure to develop a conscience, acquire true
compassion, learn to form meaningful relationships
Types of Mental Disorder
• The DSM-IV classification: lists over 300 mental disorders; by symptoms;
–Help practitioners prescribe appropriate medications
• Criticism of manual:
–Merely descriptive
Types of Mental Disorder
– Arbitrarily defines disorders in terms of a specific number of symptoms
– Encourages psychiatrists to eliminate symptoms, not causes
– Promotes biological causes over environmental problems
– Defines too many ordinary problems as mental disorders
Social Factors in Mental Disorder
• Many social factors have been studied as they relate to mental illness:–class differences–gender differences–age–race and ethnicity –urban/rural environment
A Global Perspective on Mental Disorder
• Types of mental illness varies from culture to culture, e.g.: –Latin America: people experience a
fear that their souls have left their bodies
–Malaysia: people suffer from prolonged screaming and swearing when startled
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Historically, mentally ill individuals were treated badly –Suffering for example, primitive
lobotomies• Phillippe Pinel: 1793
–Instituted moral treatment of the mentally ill; development of asylums
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Asylums later became dumping grounds for persons with mental problems
• Since 1955, new strategies have emerged
• Mentally ill persons are often viewed by the general public as: –Dangerous, dirty, unpredictable,
worthless, and the brunt of jokes
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Courts often put them away in mental institutions or prisons
– involuntary hospitalization
– incompetent to stand trial
– insanity defense
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Mental hospitals are total institutions, where persons are cut off from: • The larger society and lead enclosed, regimented
lives that dehumanize patients
• Mental hospitals routinely use tranquilizing and other drugs to alleviate symptoms – Rather than eliminate the cause of mental
disorder
• Community mental health centers
Perspectives on Mental Disorder
• Medical model: interprets mental illness as similar to a physical disease; – Identifiable/diagnosable causes; treatment
similar to physical disease
Perspectives on Mental Disorder
• Psychosocial model:
– Psychoanalytic theory: Pioneered by Freud; resulting from conflicts in personality
– Social stress theory: Interprets stress as a major contributor to the development of mental disorder
• Followers of the labeling model believe that a mental disorder is not a sickness
–But only a label imposed upon some disturbing behaviors