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…
of mental illness.” George Ernest Stahl (1660-1734), a chemistry pioneer, believed that things burned because of “phlogiston,” a theory overthrown in 1775 by Atoine Laurent Lavosier. Some people still held to the phlogiston theory for more than 20 years despite the discovery of oxygen. Similarly, Georg Ernst Stahl, father of American psychiatry, believed that all vices were diseases, declaring in 1774 that “Perhaps hereafter it may be as much the business of a physician as it is now of a divine to reclaim mankind from vice.” In every other science, a single set of laws explains success and failure, but psychiatry is reversed, with a completely different set of laws governing “healthy” and “ill” people.
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…
agent.” “Accepting the assertion of a ‘schizophrenic’ that he killed his wife because God’s voice commanded him to do so is not evidence of the validity of the explanation.
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
issues. It just sounds like an over-generalization, and everything else is based on that. Frankly, most of the pieces in the book are similar. As long as you can swallow the first little bit, the rest goes down pretty well. Another way of look at that is that the flaws are generally revealed in the first paragraph.
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.
The first misconception claims that there is the notion that “evil” is only something committed by despots and tyrants, such as the atrocities studied in human history. Second, is the notion that the medical community is complicit in the decline of society by engaging in a “ridiculous pas de deux.” This meaning that eminently predictable problems attributable to bad choices made by individuals are conceptualized and treated as medical ailments, such as depression. The following point states that while few individuals specifically seek to do evil, virtually all of the evil in modern life (at least within non-tyrannical societies) is caused by the choices made by persons throughout their lives. Fourth, the idea that passing judgment on moral choices and irresponsible behaviors is “wrong.” As a final point, he expresses that the state blindly enables the conduct responsible for the decline of society by rewarding and incentivizing personal irresponsibility.
...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.
As science has evolved, so have treatments for mental illnesses have over time. The medical model is described as the view that psychological disorders are medical diseases with a biological origin (King, 2010, pg. 413). Abnormal behavior that categorizes some disorders can be impacted by biological factors such as genes, psychological factors such as childhood experiences, and even sociocultural factors such as gender and race (King, 2010). Treatments such as psychosurgery (lobotomy) , drug therapy (pharmaceuticals), electroconclusive therapy, and psychoanalysis are used to treat a wide range of psychological disorders. Back then, the public’s negative views on mental illnesses also went as far to associate with the people who treated it; psychiatrists. “Nunnally (1961) found that the public evaluated professionals who treated mental disorders significantly more negatively than those who treat physical disorders,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). People back then didn’t see the point in “paying to be told that they were crazy”. However, in today’s society, it is now acceptable to seek help from psychiatric professionals; we are seeing more and more people seek mental health treatment. “In terms of facility-based records of utilization (Manderscheid and Henderson 1998), the data suggest that the rate of utilization of professional mental health services has at least doubled and maybe tripled, between the 1950’s and today,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). In the 1950’s, neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine were introduced to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. These drugs block a neurotransmitter called dopamine from getting to the brain, which in turn reduce schizophrenic symptoms, however there are some side effects such as substantial twitching of the neck, arms, and legs, and even dysphoria or lack of pleasure. (King, 2010, pg.
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
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.
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.
The disorder which is being treated is actually strengthened to the point of a serious mental illness. Similarly, in today’s society, medical and psychological advice may have the same effect. Medical technology and practice have progressed considerably since the time of the “Yellow Wallpaper.” This is not to say that today’s physicians are infallible. Perhaps some of today’s treatments are the “Yellow Wallpaper” of the future.
Doward, J. (2013), Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist? The Observer 12 May.
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 ...
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.
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