Book reviews--"Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness Before 1914," "Women of the Asylum: Voices from behind the walls, 1840-1945" and "The mad among us: A history of the care of America's mentally ill"

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Aron ◽  
◽  
Dina Beck ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
History Of

The History of Unreason

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Samuel Teague ◽  
Peter Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
History Of

This chapter reflects on the importance of the historical narrative of mental illness, arguing that Western countries have sought new ways to confine the mentally ill in the post-asylum era, namely through the effects of stigma and medicalization. The walls are invisible, when once they were physical. The chapter outlines how health and illness can be understood as socially constructed illustrating how mental health has been constructed uniquely across cultures and over time. To understand this process more fully, it is necessary to consider the history of madness, a story of numerous social flashpoints. The trajectories of two primary mental health narratives are charted in this chapter. The authors argue that these narratives have played, and continue to play, an important role in the social construction of mental illness. These narratives are “confinement” and “individual responsibility.” Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Roy Porter, the authors describe how Western culture has come to consider the mentally ill as a distinct, abnormal other.

Prevalence of Schizophrenia among Women in Refuges for the Homeless

1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Virgona ◽  
Neil Buhrich ◽  
Maree Teesson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Homeless Women ◽  
Lifetime Prevalence ◽  
Prolonged Stay ◽  
Psychiatric Institution ◽  
Homeless Mentally Ill ◽  
History Of

There are considerably more homeless mentally ill men than women. However the rate of mental illness among homeless women appears to be relatively greater than for men. We found the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia among a cohort of 54 women residing in refuges for the homeless in inner Sydney to be approximately 30%. Only three of the women had a history of prolonged stay in a psychiatric institution. Schizophrenic women had resided at the refuges for longer than non-schizophrenic women.

Police referral of compulsory admissions — a comparison study

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Doyle ◽  
William Delaney
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Retrospective Review ◽  
Comparison Study ◽  
Police Intervention ◽  
Emergency Procedures ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Year ◽  
Property Offences

AbstractObjective: To determine the characteristics of compulsory admissions by the police and to compare them with compulsory admissions by other means. Method: A retrospective review over one year of the case records of 48 consecutive compulsory admissions after referral by the police was compared with 96 other randomly chosen compulsory referrals over the same period. Results: In both groups a majority had a chronic history of mental illness with frequent prior compulsory hospitalisation. Significant differences were found between the two groups with the police group more often younger, single, unemployed, males. They were also significantly more likely to suffer from schizophrenia and to have had their admission precipitated by behaviour of an assaultive nature, or by property offences, and on admission to spend a shorter period in hospital. Conclusions: It is suggested that at-risk case registers and the use of alternative emergency procedures will serve to lessen the need for police intervention with the mentally ill.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 309-314
Author(s):  
Martin Summers
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Health It ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Orthodox View

The conclusion provides a summation of the book’s main arguments and offers suggestions for further research in the history of African American mental health. It reasserts the two central theses. First, Saint Elizabeths’ psychiatrists’ construction and reaffirmation of the white psyche as the norm produced a great deal of ambiguity regarding the nature of black insanity. This contributed to the prioritizing of the white sufferer of mental illness and the marginalization of mentally ill blacks. Second, African American patients and their communities exercised agency in their interactions with Saint Elizabeths, both to shape the therapeutic experience and to assert their status as citizens. This latter argument suggests that the orthodox view that African Americans have generally had an indifferent or antagonistic relationship to psychiatry needs to be rethought, which will require further historical scholarship, particularly with respect to African American activism within the realm of mental health care.

Supreme Court Limits Permissible Scope of Government’s Ability to Force Medication of Mentally Ill Defendants

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-739
Author(s):  
Mayelin Prieto-Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Antipsychotic Drugs ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
History Of ◽  
Criminal Charges

On June 16, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that forced administration of antipsychotic drugs to a defendant facing serious criminal charges is appropriate in order to render that defendant competent to stand trial, but only in limited circumstances. The treatment must be medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the fairness of the trial, and necessary to significantly further important government interests, after taking account of less-intrusive alternatives.Charles Sell, a former dentist, had a long history of mental illness. He had been hospitalized twice, in 1982 and 1984, after expressing paranoid ideas to law enforcement officials. In May 1997, Sell was charged with fifty-six counts of mail fraud, six counts of Medicaid fraud, and one count of money laundering. He was released on bail after a magistrate determined that he was currently competent to stand trial.

Psychiatry and Its Checkered Past

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Judith Puckett ◽  
David Shumway Jones
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
The Other ◽  
Psychiatric Nosology ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medical Professions ◽  
The Continuum

This chapter examines the history of critiques that have been made of psychiatric practice in specific times and specific places. Though psychiatry is well-established as part of the medical profession and requires completion of a medical education all doctors receive, psychiatrists are often viewed as distinct from other doctors, and psychiatry continues to be viewed negatively in the public eye. Psychiatrists themselves have been partly to blame for this; the profession originally spent decades attempting to differentiate itself from the other medical professions. Since it is not possible to cover every aspect of the history of critiques of psychiatry, the chapter focuses on two major problems that continue to influence how psychiatry is practiced and perceived today: the development of asylums as a form of confinement for those who are mentally ill, and the development of psychiatric nosology and diagnosis. By exploring the continuum of mental illness and the idea of “normal versus abnormal,” the chapter offers psychiatrists a framework for how they can think about their work going forward.

scholarly journals Psychiatry and the dark side: eugenics, Nazi and Soviet psychiatry

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Luty
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Psychiatric Treatment ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Thomas Szasz

SummaryPsychiatrist Thomas Szasz fought coercion (compulsory detention) and denied that mental illness existed. Although he was regarded as a maverick, his ideas are much more plausible when one discovers that between 1939 and 1941, up to 100 000 mentally ill people, including 5000 children, were killed in Nazi Germany. In the course of the Nazi regime, over 400 000 forced sterilisations took place, mainly of people with mental illnesses. Other countries, including Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, had active forced sterilisation programmes and eugenics laws. Similar laws were implemented in the USA, with up to 25 000 forced sterilisations. These atrocities were enabled and facilitated by psychiatrists of the time and are only one example of the dark side of the profession. This article reviews some of these aspects of the history of psychiatry, including Germany's eugenics programme and the former USSR's detention of dissidents under the guise of psychiatric treatment.

Nine Suicide Pacts a Clinical Study of a Consecutive Series 1974–93

1995 ◽  
Vol 167 (4) ◽  
pp. 448-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Brown ◽  
Elizabeth King ◽  
Brian Barraclough
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Clinical Study ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Alcohol Dependence ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Medical Literature ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Consecutive Series ◽  
Time Of Death ◽  
History Of

BackgroundSuicide pacts are rarely discussed in the medical literature. We report here the medical and social aspects of a consecutive series of double or pact suicides.MethodCoroners' records were examined for 722 consecutive suicides. Data were extracted from them and from medical and psychiatric records.ResultsNine pacts (2.5% of suicides) were located: 11 of the 18 people appeared to have been mentally ill at the time of death and three more had a history of mental illness. Five had a significant medical history (three cancer).ConclusionsMental disorder is common in those who enter suicide pacts (mainly depression, with alcohol dependence rare). Motivations for suicide appear to be relief of mental disorder and pain.

scholarly journals One dose of Architecture, taken daily: Building for Mental Health in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca McLaughlan
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Hospital Design ◽  
Mental Hospitals ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

<p>Thousands of New Zealanders were treated in the nation’s mental hospitals in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Existing research has examined this history of institutionalisation from the perspectives of policy, psychiatric medicine and nursing culture, but to date little has been written about the built fabric of this type of institutional care. This dissertation asks what does the architectural approach taken to Seacliff Asylum (1878-84), Kingseat Hospital (1927-40) and Cherry Farm Hospital (1943-71) indicate about official attitudes to mental illness in New Zealand. Architecture was thought to be capable of performing a curative role in the treatment of mental illness; the administrators of New Zealand’s mental hospitals stated this belief publically in various press releases and reports to the government between 1878 and 1957. This dissertation examines Seacliff, Kingseat and Cherry Farm against current thought regarding the treatment of mental illness and against best architectural practice in mental hospital design.   While these three institutions were the jewels in the crown of New Zealand’s mental hospital network, only Kingseat could be considered an exemplary hospital of its time. The compromises that occurred in the construction of Seacliff, Kingseat and Cherry Farm hospitals indicate that meeting the needs of the mentally ill was only one of a number of agendas that were addressed by the officials involved in the design of these institutions. Many of these agendas were peripheral to the delivery of mental health care, such as the political desire for colonial propaganda and professional concerns of marginalisation, and conflicted with the attainment of ideal environments for the treatment of mental illness. The needs of the mentally ill were a low priority for successive New Zealand governments who exhibited a reluctance to spend taxpayer funds on patients who were not considered curable. The architects and medical advisors involved in the design of these facilities did attempt to meet the needs of these patients; however, they were limited by a design and procurement process that elevated political and operational concerns over the curative potential of these hospitals.   This dissertation also examines the role of individuals in the design of these institutions. Architect Robert Lawson was reproached for deficiencies in the curative potential of Seacliff Asylum. Similarly, medical administrator Theodore Gray has received criticism for limiting the development of New Zealand’s wider network of mental hospital care. This dissertation establishes that Lawson and Gray deserve greater recognition for their relative contributions to the architecture created, within New Zealand, for the treatment of mental illness.</p>

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