Psychological Disorders In Elizabeth Cochran's Ten Days In A Mad-House

1077 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Development of psychoanalytic theory

Psychology Final Review

A psychological disorder is defined as a deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving (1). This however, was not always the way of viewing psychological disorders. It wasn’t until 1887, when a neurotypical journalist named Elizabeth Cochran lied about having a mental illness to admit herself into a mental health institute or what was previously referred to as and an asylum. Cochran wrote about the awful living conditions of the asylums in her exposè, Ten Days in a Mad-House. This brought attention to mental health and began a revolution in mental health reform. The reform shifted people from viewing mental disorders sufferers as freaks that should be locked up to patients with …show more content…

Phobias are persistent irrational fears of specific items, situations, or activities. An example of a phobia would be ereuthophobia which is the fear of the color red. People that have phobias often develop avoidance behavior. Some phobias are not easy to pinpoint. Social Anxiety Disorder is when someone gets anxious around people. This is a broad statement Social Anxiety Disorder could be caused by being seen by others, being in groups of people, or looking outside the window at people. The trigger is unclear, and in my opinion is most likely a spectrum. When people experience a phobia it is natural to want to escape or avoid the source of the fear. However, doing so reinforces the phobia and therefore makes it worse.

Some mental illnesses are not common. Schizophrenia affects one percent of the U.S population (5). Schizophrenia is a Dissociative Disorder characterized by individuals that are dissociated from reality, have disorganized thinking and emotions, and experience hallucinations. Schizophrenia is also a spectrum. An aspect that most cases of schizophrenia share is hallucinations, a split from reality, and a faint connection with reality. An example of Schizophrenia would be if someone believed that they had died and believed that they are living as a

Show More
Related

  • The Mad Among Us By Gerald Grob

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book “The Mad Among Us-A History of the Care of American’s Mentally Ill,” the author Gerald Grob, tells a very detailed accounting of how our mental health system in the United States has struggled to understand and treat the mentally ill population. It covers the many different approaches that leaders in the field of mental health at the time used but reading it was like trying to read a food label. It is regurgitated in a manner that while all of the facts are there, it lacks any sense humanity. While this may be more of a comment on the author or the style of the author, it also is telling of the method in which much of the policy and practice has come to be. It is hard to put together without some sense of a story to support the action.

    Read More

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    Every year one hundred thousand young Americans are diagnosed with the disease schizophrenia (Carman Research). Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that is associated with unnatural behavior or thinking . The disease usually affects people during the late adolescence stage or early adulthood, typically during this time they develop the symptoms linked to the disease.

    Read More

  • Mental Illnesses In The 1800's

    269 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the 1800’s people with mental illnesses were frowned upon and weren't treated like human beings. Mental illnesses were claimed to be “demonic possessions” people with mental illnesses were thrown into jail cells, chained to their beds,used for entertainment and even killed. Some were even slaves, they were starved and forced to work in cold or extremely hot weather with chains on their feet. Until 1851, the first state mental hospital was built and there was only one physician on staff responsible for the medical, moral and physical treatment of each inmate. Who had said "Violent hands shall never be laid on a patient, under any provocation.

    Read More

  • Social Anxiety Disorder: Nature vs Nurture

    904 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the most common anxiety disorder is social phobia, which can sometimes be interchangeable with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Marc de Rosnay, and others, states that Social Anxiety Disorder is characterized by a clearly noticeable fear and avoidance of most social situations where the individual may be put under scrutiny by others, and by fear in such situations, the individual will behave in an embarrassing manner (de Rosnay). One of the most notable feature of social phobia is that it has an early onset, as early as 7-9 months in most cases. The characteristics of having social phobia, or social anxiety disorder, is that the individuals are shy when meeting new people, quiet in a large group, blush easily, and often avoids making eye contact. There are a lot of concerns/problems with having social anxiety disorder. As a group, individuals with anxiety disorders had the largest burden of role disability compared to other common mental health conditions, exceeding the burden for mood disorders and in some cases, substance abuse (Grigorenko).

    Read More

  • Girl Interrupted And American Horror Story: Insane Asylum

    1971 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...

    Read More

  • History and Overview of Insane Asylums

    1763 Words  | 4 Pages

    For many decades the mentally ill or insane have been hated, shunned, and discriminated against by the world. They have been thrown into cruel facilities, said to help cure their mental illnesses, where they were tortured, treated unfairly, and given belittling names such as retards, insane, demons, and psychos. However, reformers such as Dorothea Dix thought differently of these people and sought to help them instead. She saw the inhumanity in these facilities known as insane asylums or mental institutions, and showed the world the evil that wandered inside these asylums. Although movements have been made to improve conditions in insane asylums, and were said to help and treat the mentally ill, these brutally abusive places were full of disease and disorder, and were more like concentration camps similar to those in Europe during WWII than hospitals.

    Read More

  • Anxiety Disorders : Generalized Anxiety Disorder

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    Related disorder- involves phobias, or intense fears about certain objects or situations. Specific phobias may, involve things such as encountering certain animals or flying in airplanes, while social phobias involve fear of social settings or public places.

    Read More

  • Media Portrayal of Mental Illness in America

    3886 Words  | 8 Pages

    Star,S.A.(1955). The public’s ideas about mental illness. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Mental Health.

    Read More

  • Mental: A History Of The Madhouse Analysis

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    The BBC documentary, Mental: A History of the Madhouse, delves into Britain’s mental asylums and explores not only the life of the patients in these asylums, but also explains some of the treatments used on such patients (from the early 1950s to the late 1990s). The attitudes held against mental illness and those afflicted by it during the time were those of good intentions, although the vast majority of treatments and aid being carried out against the patients were anything but “good”. In 1948, mental health began to be included in the NHS (National Health Service) as an actual medical condition, this helped to bring mental disabilities under the umbrella of equality with all other medical conditions; however, asylums not only housed people

    Read More

  • Theme Of Schizophrenia In A Beautiful Mind

    1362 Words  | 3 Pages

    Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders with major impairments in thought, emotion, and behavior; there is a constant prevalence rate of one percent with the occurrence being slightly higher in men. Though different psychologists have various theories on whether the disorder is linked to genetics or social economic status, schizophrenia in all

    Read More

  • Examples Of Single Story Perspective

    1144 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moreover, the labeling perspective on mental illness... was first formulated decades ago, when mental hospitals were the predominant type of care for persons with mental health problems… Patients were described as undergoing a moral career, which involved the loss of all previous roles because of the way mental health care was structured, and which finally lead to a so-called spoiled identity, the result being that reintegration in society was very difficult, if not impossible (Verhaeghe et al.

    Read More

  • Informative Speech On Phobias

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    Main Point 1: There are three main categories of phobias. The first category is Specific Phobias which are known as simple phobias. Specific phobias or simple phobias are usually fears about specific situations, living creatures, places, activities, or things. Examples of simple phobias is dentophobia (dentists), aerophobia (flying), claustrophobia (small spaces), and acrophobia (heights). The other two categories are Social Phobia and Agoraphobia. These two are known as complex phobias. The article “What is a Phobia?”, describes them as complex phobias because “they are linked to deep-rooted fear or anxiety about certain situations, incidents or circumstances, which make them more disabling than simple phobias.” Social phobia is also referred to as social anxiety disorder. Social phobia may be defined in which a person has an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations. (Webmd.com) A person with social phobia finds being in social situations very difficult to handle with because of the lack of social skills or experiences that person may have. Going out to social events such as parties or functions may cause anxiety to a person with social phobia. There is that fear a person has of being embarrassed in public. People with this phobia may be afraid of a specific situation such as public speaking. Medicinenet.com defines “agoraphobia” as “a fear of being outside or otherwise being in a situation from which one either cannot escape or from which escaping would be difficult or humiliating.” The results of agoraphobia are anxiety and panic attacks. People with agoraphobia sometimes confine themselves inside their own home when symptoms are

    Read More

  • Schizophrenia

    1848 Words  | 4 Pages

    Schizophrenia is defined as a severe disabling mental illness. A person with this illness may be completely out of touch with what is going on around them. For example, the individual suffering from Schizophrenia may hear voices, see people who are not there (ghost in other words), and or feel bugs crawling on their skin when in actuality there are now. They may also have disorganized speech and behavior, physically rigid, emotionless, and delusions. The type of delusions where they believe that people are reading their minds, have control over their thoughts, and or plotting to hurt them. They have difficulty holding jobs and taking care of themselves.

    Read More

  • The United States’ Lack of Mental Health Care

    1590 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior” (Mayo Clinic). Mental disorders can happen many times through one’s life, but mental illness is classified as an ongoing problem with the symptoms that can affect the ability to perform normal day to day tasks (Mayo Clinic). Many people look at those afflicted with mental disorders as being crazy or clinically insane, while the reality is a problem many people live with on a daily basis with help from medications, psychologist visits, family, friends, help groups, and many other support systems. The lack of support available to mentally ill patients, the more that will refuse treatment and refuse to find help for their disorders. Many people who were born with mental disorders grow up knowing they have a problem, but people who develop them later in age don’t understand how to cope with it.

    Read More

  • Social Anxiety Disorder

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    Social anxiety disorder is also known as social phobia. It is defined as the fear of social situations that involve interaction with other people. It is the fear and anxiety of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people or behaving in a way that might cause embarrassment or ridicule. This leads to feelings of inadequacy, self-consciousness, and depression. The person with social anxiety disorder may believe that all eyes are on him at all times. Social anxiety disorder is the third largest mental health case issue in the world, and it can effect 7% of the population (15 million Americans) at any given time.

    Read More

More about Psychological Disorders In Elizabeth Cochran's Ten Days In A Mad-House

Open Document