Widening the Psychiatric Gaze: Reflections on PsychoDoctor, Depression, and Recent Transitions in Japanese Mental Health Care

2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Vickery
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Psychological Services ◽  
Utilization Of Services ◽  
Attitudes Toward Mental Illness ◽  
Popular Images

Japan has one of the world’s highest rates of psychiatric institutionalization, and popular images of mental health care and public attitudes toward mental illness there have been stigmatized for decades. However, there are transitions underway that are reshaping the mental health care landscape as well as affecting public representations of mental illness. Those transitions include attempts to promote community-based care, move away from long-term hospitalization, reduce stigma, increase utilization of services, and bring clinical psychological services under the national health insurance umbrella. This article discusses one cultural representation in which those transitions are brought into relief: a 2002 television series entitled PsychoDoctor that portrayed the clinical practice of a psychiatrist. The article analyzes the messages inherent in the series about the nature of mental illness, the everyday-ness of sufferers, and the expanded repertoire of treatments now available. In so doing, the article suggests that the efforts of progressive clinicians, pharmaceutical companies, and mental health activists to put forth new images of mental illness and mental health care are now having a degree of success in the arena of popular culture.

scholarly journals Patterns of mental health care in a seaside lodging house

1993 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-83
Author(s):  
John Barnes ◽  
Greg Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
General Practitioner ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Local Sources

Much of the medical care of the long-term mentally ill falls to the general practitioner (Wilkinson et al, 1985) and, for example, a survey in Buckinghamshire showed that these patients consult their general practitioner (GP) twice as often as mental health services. Lodging house dwellers are known to show an increased prevalence of major mental illness and to suffer much secondary social handicap, presenting a challenge to helping services of all disciplines. For this reason we chose a lodging house in which to explore further the relationships between mental illness and residents' present contact with their GP, mental health services and other local sources of help.

Destigmatizing Mental Health Care: Impact of a Single, 2-h Intervention on Attitudes Toward Mental Illness in Undergraduate Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-347
Author(s):  
Orsola Gambini ◽  
Anne Destrebecq ◽  
Paolo Ferrara ◽  
Stefano Terzoni ◽  
Armando D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Attitudes Toward Mental Illness

Perceptions of Media’s Contribution Toward Stigmatization of Mental Health by Saudi Arabian Nurses

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 568-575
Author(s):  
Seham Mansour Alyousef ◽  
Sami Abdulrahman Alhamidi ◽  
Monirah Albloushi ◽  
Thurayya Abduwahid Eid
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
King Saud University ◽  
Attitudes Toward Mental Illness

BACKGROUND: Public often obtains mental health information from mass media and Saudi Arabia is characterized by high media penetration. Fictional and nonfictional media dramatize, trivialize, and misrepresent characteristics and needs of clients who need mental health care and may create and reinforce existing stigma. This pattern of stigma may adversely affect mental health care clients, practitioners, education, and programs. Portrayal of mental illness and opportunities for care in Saudi Arabia need development. OBJECTIVE: This study examined Saudi graduate nurses’ perceptions of stigma created by mass media and influence on public perceptions of mental health issues and use of these views to formulate ways to effect changes in mental health care availability and delivery. METHOD: Participants included 18 graduate practicing female mental health nurses at King Saud University School of Nursing. Qualitative data were collected using individual interviews and analyzed using NVivo 10.1 software for thematic content analysis. RESULTS: The core theme that emerged was “stigma in media,” which in turn had five subthemes: (a) media portrayal, (b) mass media, (c) social stigma, and (d) mental health care services. CONCLUSION: This inquiry may be helpful in enabling development of stigma-reduction programs by shedding light on the role of mass media in forming normative behavior and attitudes toward mental illness in Saudi culture.

A Tribute to the Late William J. Curran

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Legal Medicine ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Institute ◽  
University Professor

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.

Consumerism for Neurobiological Disorders: An Assessment

1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 644-656
Author(s):  
Richard E. Peschel ◽  
Enid Peschel
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Outcome Data ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
Equitable Treatment

AbstractConsumerism is a growing phenomenon in U.S. health care, yet its exercise is still inhibited by powerful forces within the medical community. Despite the neuroscientific framework that stresses the commonalities between mental and physical illness, consumerism is even more problematic and difficult in mental health care than in other areas of health care. People with severe mental illness and their advocates must contend with limited public understanding of neurobiological disorders, poor definitions of effective treatment, and a paucity of outcome data, especially from prospective randomized and long-term studies. The only clear way for consumerism to grow in mental health care is for its advocates to align themselves with the neuroscientific revolution and to demand that effective and equitable treatment programs be created based on the documented evidence of the physical nature of neurobiological disorders.

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