(no subject)
Sep. 11th, 2006 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastiennehttp://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/archives/spr2004/entries/mental-illness/
this is a lovely link. i'm mostly posting it for my own reference, so i can investiagte it further when i don't have a practical report and collections revision to be doing.. but at the same time I thought I might as well make it public in case anyone else cared. Got into reading Thomas Szasz last summer and it occurs to me that my module in "personality and psychological disorders" is the perfect time to stir him into my degree... ok, there might only be a minimal grain of truth in any of this, but there is some truth. you don't even have to draw the slightly dubious "witch-burnings" analogy... homosexuality and "masturbatory insanity" (cured, in boys, with a chastity belt with internal spikes which prevented erection) are more direct historical evidence and make me wonder which bits of the DSM:IV will be seen in the same way in another hundred years. paraphilias? personality disorders?
(wow - that paragraph is delightfully incoherent if you've never read the book i'm talking about, isn't it? Szasz effectively said that mental illness is a myth, a creation of the state to keep down dangerous elements.. incarceration in mental insitutions, electro-shock therapy, even medicating for things, being the modern-day equivalent of witch-burnings, controlling "undesirable" or "destablilising" elements in society. so much wank, of course, on one level - bet you all know loads of people who've benefitted from medication or even institutionalisation and don't feel that they've been burned at the stake... but at the same time, I bet you, or one of your friends, knows someone who DOES feel martyred, or at least repackaged to fit society's ticky boxes, at their own detriment.)
this is a lovely link. i'm mostly posting it for my own reference, so i can investiagte it further when i don't have a practical report and collections revision to be doing.. but at the same time I thought I might as well make it public in case anyone else cared. Got into reading Thomas Szasz last summer and it occurs to me that my module in "personality and psychological disorders" is the perfect time to stir him into my degree... ok, there might only be a minimal grain of truth in any of this, but there is some truth. you don't even have to draw the slightly dubious "witch-burnings" analogy... homosexuality and "masturbatory insanity" (cured, in boys, with a chastity belt with internal spikes which prevented erection) are more direct historical evidence and make me wonder which bits of the DSM:IV will be seen in the same way in another hundred years. paraphilias? personality disorders?
(wow - that paragraph is delightfully incoherent if you've never read the book i'm talking about, isn't it? Szasz effectively said that mental illness is a myth, a creation of the state to keep down dangerous elements.. incarceration in mental insitutions, electro-shock therapy, even medicating for things, being the modern-day equivalent of witch-burnings, controlling "undesirable" or "destablilising" elements in society. so much wank, of course, on one level - bet you all know loads of people who've benefitted from medication or even institutionalisation and don't feel that they've been burned at the stake... but at the same time, I bet you, or one of your friends, knows someone who DOES feel martyred, or at least repackaged to fit society's ticky boxes, at their own detriment.)
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 05:24 pm (UTC)I think that "mental illness" is a difficult term, and I do agree that many so-called mental illnesses are organic, and those that are really "mental" can't be quickly and easily defined as illness but may in fact be symptomatic with an intrapersonal difference in perspective not a personal dysfunction.
Furthermore, it is absolutely true that the label of "mental illness" has been used to justify the supression of individuals, as well as entire concepts of sexuality and religion.
Conceptually, the anti-psychiatry movement has a lot of ground. And I'm sure there are plenty of people stuck in medical model treatments that wish there was another way. The problem is that anti-psychiatry as a movement is a devil's advocate, NOT another way.
So if you (abstract term, obviously, not *you* personally) reject psychiatry, fine. So go stand in a hospital ward and find something else to do with the people there who are suffering and need something to help them.
I think the vital thing with the treatment of mental illness is to continue to expand our definitions of what can be "normal" and "functional" and to focus our definitions (as you and I always seem to come back to in our discussions) on whether the person in question *feels* like they are functioning sucessfully. It's also important to allow psychiatry to move (where appropriate) into areas of maintainence and support rather than purely change - e.g. people who may feel they are not functioning adequately because their gender or sexuality doesn't match the input they've had from the world may need psychiatric help - but to maintain their strength rather than to change the "issue" they have.
I think there are parts of the diagnostic criteria that will change. For instance, I think that asexuality is a valid sexuality choice, so anything that has a "low sex drive" criterion should be changed. (To give the DSM people they're due I think it is generally *change* in sex drive, although I'm not sure how many clinicians make the distinction adequately.) I guess my point is just that we can't sit still waiting for the DSM to be perfect before we go out and treat people. Yes, it's a case of make-do-and-mend while we work things out more but it's the best there is.
Yeah, ok, I'll stop now. I know none of this is really news to you. You should know better than to get me started...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 07:47 pm (UTC)