Defining Mental Illness Flashcards
What is mental illness?
- Changes in thinking, emotion or behaviour (or combinations)
- Associated with distress and or problems in functioning and social, work or family activities
- Syndromes (constellations of symptoms) with distress and/or impairment
What is the percentage that a US adults are currently experiencing some form of mental illness?
20% of US adults
What are the odds that a person will have a mental health disorder in their lifetime?
- 50.8% in US population
- >50% New Zeland
What is the difference between illness and disease?
- Disease has an underlying biological/ pathological process
- Illness = feeling, an experience of unhealthy which is personal, interior to the person
What is psychiatry based on?
- Medical model which emphasises verifiable disease processes
Although some biological changes have been identified for mental illness, what are some problems with it?
- Variability + lack of consistence
- No single cause had been identified
- Not clear is cause or effect
What are the consequences of the medical models?
- Biological treatment + research are valued
- Medical profession becomes very important
= psychiatry the common view of mental illness
- Medical profession becomes very important
Anti-psychiatry movement
- By saying mental illnesses are diseases = distortion of truth since not concert evidence
- Thomas Szasz - we define depression, Sz because we don’t understand them + don’t want to
○ They will never be diseases because they are inherently subjective
○ Suffering is real but we have created these labels
§ Sadness, loneliness, they experience but calling them depression removes them from the underlying truth - Focus on psychiatry is obscuring cause as we are looking for causes for things that don’t exist eg SZ - the suffering is real tho
○ Need a more holistic approach where psychological factors are addressed
○ Biosocialpsychology
- Thomas Szasz - we define depression, Sz because we don’t understand them + don’t want to
What evidence is there suggesting that spirit possession is more of a symptom than a cause of psychopathology?
- Spirit possession is more common among trauma sufferers
○ Higher prevalence in child soldiers who were forces to kill than in children who has not been abducted
What did plato think was the origin of mental illness?
- Not living a moral life + not understanding what a moral life means
- Morality = psychological maturity + wellbeing
What does it meant to live a moral life?
- Addressing the 3 different layers of the soul
- Appetite - food, sex, money
- Spirit - ambition, honour
- Reason - wisdom, knowledge, truth
- Let reason govern - allow expression but not let to dominate/ fixate
- Fixation at 1/2 = immorality = mental illness
How does immorality result in mental illness according to Plato?
- Produces pleasure but self-interest leads to deprivation and prevents person form living well
What does it mean by self-deception is the root of emotional distress and mental illness according to Plato?
Lack of knowledge about self/ own nature(reason)
What is the focus of therapy according to Plato and why?
- Help people become more moral by aiming to improve their character and virtue
- Engage in deep self-reflection to achieve psychological freedom, modesty + wisdom
- Therapist help question client’s responsibility
= Socratic Questioning (origin of talking therapy)
Why is the focus of therapy according to Plato based on improving morality?
- Because it is through immorality that the person become mentally ill
- Which was their responsibility
