I’ve been reading Everything You Know Is Wrong from Disinformation, and it’s… intriguing. There is a mixture of bizarre claims and sensible advice, and some articles about which I don’t know enough to decide. For example, there’s an article on psychiatry that I’ve summarized here: Mental Illness: Psychiatry’s Phlogiston by Thomas Szasz, M.D. Summary: “In physics, we use the same laws to explain why airplanes fly and why they crash. In psychiatry, we use one set of laws to explain sane behavior, which we attribute to reasons (choices), and another set of laws to explain insane behavior, which we attribute to causes (diseases). … Establishing psychiatry as a science of the nature of human behavior requires the recognition of the nonexistence …show more content…
Convulsions — involuntary actions — are uncoordinated contractions of muscles. Violence is a voluntary action, a coordinated act. “Oxidation, a real process, explains combustion better than does phlogiston, a nonexistent substance. Attributing all human actions to choice, the basic building block of our social existence, explains human behavior better than attributing certain (disapproved) actions to mental illness, a nonexistent disease.” “Even seemingly irrational acts are committed by people with reasons. People with brain diseases — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsonism, glioblastoma — are persons whose actions continue to be governed by their desires or motives. The illness limits their freedom of action, but not their status as moral agents.” “Holding a person responsible for his act is not the same as blaming or praising him for it… Conversely, holding a person not responsible for his act by reason of mental illness means that we do not regard him as a (full-fledged) actor or moral …show more content…
In my view, such a person kills his victim because that is what he wants to do, but he disavows his intention; instead of acknowledging his motive, he defines himself as a helpless slave obeying orders.” “…the old, prescientific-religious explanation of human behavior is more faithful to the facts than the modern, scientific-psychiatric explanation of it.” “Erroneous explanations of the material world lead to physical catastrophes, and false explanations of the human condition, to moral catastrophes.” All of this hangs together well and seems like common sense, but it all rests on a claim about which I know nothing. While I wouldn’t expect a psychiatrist to phrase a description of his or her own profession in the same way a critic would, I’m curious about how much truth or falsity a psychiatrist, or someone more familiar with psychiatry than I am, would find in the claim that psychiatry uses essentially two sets of rules to deal with two different
...s that the DSM can also falsely determine ones specific mental health, showing the struggle between diagnosing someone with genuine disorders and excessively diagnosing individuals.
Madness: A History, a film by the Films Media Group, is the final installment of a five part series, Kill or Cure: A History of Medical Treatment. It presents a history of the medical science community and it’s relationship with those who suffer from mental illness. The program uses original manuscripts, photos, testimonials, and video footage from medical archives, detailing the historical progression of doctors and scientists’ understanding and treatment of mental illness. The film compares and contrasts the techniques utilized today, with the methods of the past. The film offers an often grim and disturbing recounting of the road we’ve taken from madness to illness.
Stone, D. (2011, May 8). Psychological Musings: Historical Perspectives of Abnormal Psychology. Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://psychological-musings.blogspot.com/2011/05/historical-perspectives-of-abnormal.html
In ancient times, a superstition was once believed by humans that erratic behavior was the possession of spiritually evil demons, that only wizardry or sorcery could mend and cure the mentally ill. In 1808, a man named Professor Johann Christian Reil developed a new medicine field called Psychiatry, meaning the soul or mind. Eventually, the physicians practicing this medical field were known as Psychiatrist (“History of Psychiatry”). As time passed, the field started to evolve and the knowledge expanded becoming one of the oldest medical fields still existing today (“Psychiatrist – DO/MD”). Psychiatrists are medical doctors who are experts at preventing and treating psychological illnesses such as mental disorders. A Psychiatrist is a significant aspect to the medical field because they gain insight into the human mind, specialize in varieties of mental disorders, and help humans overcome internal problems.
Mass Murderers and Serial Killers are nothing new to today’s society. These vicious killers are all violent, brutal monsters and have an abnormal urge to kill. What gives people these urges to kill? What motivates them to keep killing? Do these killers get satisfaction from killing? Is there a difference between mass murderers and serial killers or are they the same. How do they choose their victims and what are some of their characteristics? These questions and many more are reasons why I was eager to write my paper on mass murderers and serial killers. However, the most interesting and sought after questions are the ones that have always been controversial. One example is; what goes on inside the mind of a killer? In this paper I will try to develop a better understanding of these driven killers and their motives.
Whitaker, Leighton C. "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America." Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry 13.2 (2011): 169-71. Print.
It is not until the Church’s power begins to fade that science could rise to the forefront for the understanding and treatment of disorders. However, science’s reasoning for schizophrenia failed sometimes too. For instance, an explanation of schizophrenia that developed in the 1900’s by Freud believed that schizophrenia evolves from conditions that are caused by a world that is exceedingly strident towards individuals either by parents that have been unnurturing to their children or if they have experienced a trauma. However, in 1948 Frieda Fromm-Reichmann expanded on Freud’s ...
Throughout this course, much of what we have discussed has depended strongly on an interpretation of scientific information. We have questioned, criticized, accepted, rejected, and formed our own ideas about topics in neural and behavioral science. A book which I have read recently seems to fit in with this type of discussion. Blaming the Brain, by Eliot Valenstein, describes the major biological theories of mental illness and the lack of evidence we have to fully support them.
The basis of of why one can not put faith in the solution of pharmaceutical drugs has to do with the fact that there is not enough information concerning the repercussions of psychiatric drugs; which in turn, has to do with the fact that the brain is the most complex part of the human body. One has to understand how the brain works completely in order to know the effects psychiatric drugs will have; medical practitioners do not know enough about the brain yet. This is why Joel Paris, a professor of psychiatry at McGill University, writes in his book “Use and Misuse of Psychiatric Drugs: An Evidence Based-Critique” how due to the fact medical practitioners are still learning about the brain and how it works, one can not know how the brain is going to react completely to the medications (11-12). Because of this, Joel states, “Psychiatrists like to believe that the drugs they prescribe have precise, scientifically proven effects on the brain. But the fact is that while we understand what these agents can do, we do not know how they work” (11). Still referring to the complexity of the brain, Joel further
He states that diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies of their suffers because people believe they cannot help the conditions that affect them. Whereas people who suffer from mental illnesses are seen as an inconveniences. They are blamed for their flaws even though it is not their fault. People see their conditions as a lack of will power rather than a disease. The diseases of the brain are easier to understand for the general public. They know that something terrible happened and it couldn’t be the patient’s fault. They feel sympathetic, so theses people get more help. Society can’t understand what is wrong with people who suffer from mental disease because there is nothing physically wrong with them. They seem normal so they don’t receive as much medical help. Damasio describes this on page
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013), mental illness refers collectively to all diagnosable mental disorders. A study has shown that about one in four adults, which is 61.5 million Americans, experience mental illness each year. In addition, one in seventeen Americans lives with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder, (National Alliance of Mental Illness, 2013). The causes of mental disorders can stem from genetics and family history, life experience...
Doward, J. (2013), Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist? The Observer 12 May.
Mental illness, today we are surround by a broad array of types of mental illnesses and new discoveries in this field every day. Up till the mid 1800’s there was no speak of personality disorder, in fact there was only two type of mental illness recognized. Those two illnesses as defined by Dr. Sam Vaknin (2010), “”delirium” or “manial”- were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions.” It was later in 1835 when J. C. Pritchard the British Physician working at Bristol Infirmary Hospital published his work titled “Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorder of the Mind” this opened the door to the world of personality disorder. There were many story and changes to his theories and mental illness and it was then when Henry Maudsley in 1885 put theses theories to work and applied to a patient. This form of mental illness has since grown into the many different types of personality disorder that we know today. Like the evolution of the illness itself there has been a significant change in the way this illness is diagnosed and treated.
In the field of psychology many models have approached metal illness from different perspectives. Psychologists use models to depict or explain things that cannot be perceive. Psychologists use these models in order to explain, comprehend and treat mental illness. These models include the behavioral model, the psychodynamic model and the humanistic model. All of these models approach and explain mental illness from different perspectives.
This notion is supported by “members of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill” who, when surveyed in a study, “consistently cited media sources as the perpetuators of mental illness stereotypes and stigma” (Diefenbach 183). The fact that the stigmas most commonly illustrated on television programs are also the ones held by society, further solidifies this cause-and-effect relationship. These stigmas include ideas that those who suffer from mental illnesses are “bizarre or dangerous...different from the rest of the population, potentially uncontrollable and threatening” and that “mental illness ends in tragedy...such as suicide” (Henson 556), all of which are presented by television programs for the sake of earning viewers. Even “the term ‘mental illness’ itself engenders fear and stereotypes of chronic disability” (Henson 555), once again proving that society 's discussion of this topic is not only inaccurate, but it is also offensive and detrimental to those suffering from various mental health issues. For instance, stigmas have the ability to prevent those with disorders from seeking treatment or even render them unable to realize that they suffer from a mental illness or require treatment in the first place. In addition, they allow for both prejudice and