Exam #3 Flashcards
DALYs and Mental/Neurological Disorders
Mental/Neurological Disorders have high DALYs due to long-term rates of disability and suffering.
Critiques of the DSM
- Homosexuality was initially medicalized.
- Gender Dysphoria: A transgender individual must be diagnosed with this specific disorder before insurance companies will pay for reassignment surgery.
- Diagnostic Inflation: The DSM keeps expanding; is the scope of disorders expanding to encompass more and more?
- “Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder:” Aging (and loss of female sex drive) is medicalized, deems medication necessary
- “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder:” Young children (disrupt classrooms) are medicated.
Bipolar Disorder (Emily Martin)
There is a cultural valorization of mania (e.g. athletes or Wall Street workers), yet these populations are not medicalized.
Diagnosis of mania is accompanied by a loss of autonomy and personhood, individual is deemed “out of control”.
Susto
Folk illness commonly felt by Latino immigrants.
Present with fright or “soul loss”.
Symptoms are also somatic (sleeplessness, loss of appetite).
Treated through folk healing.
Amafufuyana
South Africa
Form of folk illness associated with soul possession and hysteria.
Affects marginalized populations, specifically during periods of social change - it becomes a means of accessing healthcare.
Treatment through exorcism.
Arthur Kleinman and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry
Psychiatry is a Western concept bound to Western culture, we need a form of cross-cultural psychiatry that connects psychological processes of all social worlds.
There are negative effects of posing psychiatric categories as biological and universal (e.g. lack of follow-up).
Discursive Psychiatry
Psychiatry is capable of constructing meaning.
Globalization of Western Psychiatry [to Argentina]
Globalization of Western Psychiatry [to Argentina] Erodes national tradition of talk therapy.
Created a conflict between treatment through extensive talk therapy and efficient diagnosis by a psychiatrist.
Why zebras don’t get ulcers?
Stress in Contemporary Society
Today, people experience constant, low-levels of stress (over-experienced), consequently weakening the immune response and causing other health issues.
Whitehall I
High stratification workplace environment with equal and full access to healthcare.
Higher job control is associated with lower levels of heart disease; there were more deaths among low-level clerics versus executives.
Whitehall II
Lower social support at work is associated with higher incidences of mental health disorders.
High effort, low reward jobs have the worst heart disease outcomes - they are living in a environment of chronic, low-level stress.
Job insecurity = Higher rates of heart disease
Stress becomes biological, affecting the mind and the body.
Impacts of Whitehall
Equal access to healthcare does not assure health equality.
Stress can cause physiological changes.
Executives do not experience the most stress.
Paradox of over/under-nutrition in modern society
Poorer societies = malnourished
Wealthy societies = obesity
Where does malnutrition in poorer countries stem from?
Historical processes emphasized cash crop economies, which led to the erosion of subsistence farming.
Increased wage labor led to a change in food habits, lack of breastfeeding, snacking, fast food, etc.
Epidemiological Transition (Abdel Omran)
Mortality and morbidity is [now] made up of chronic, non-communicable and degenerative diseases (not acute, infectious, degenerative diseases).
Nutritional Transition
Greater urbanization led to industrialization and a nutritional transition.
There is an increase in food availability, cheaper vegetable oils, exposure to advertising and mass media, an eating away from the home.
Affects of the Nutritional Transition
Dietary changes and rise in rates of obesity.
Subsidization
Government subsidies provide incentive for farmers to grow corn, but not fruits or vegetables, which become more expensive as a result.
“Let’s Move” Campaign (Michelle Obama)
Government fosters life by providing arbitrary “categories” of food that must be filled. However, these categories are largely influenced by lobbying of the agricultural industry..
What the government subsidizes is very different from what composes a healthy diet.
Critiques of the “Let’s Move” Campaign
Focuses on exercise, ignoring the politicization of food and the creation of budgets/subsidies that affect nutritional habits.
The Politics of Obesity (Guthman)
Obese individuals are not responsible [to blame] for their own health.
There is a contradiction of encouraging mass consumption (binging and mania) in capitalist society, while valorizing thinness, restraint, moderation, and balance.
Moral Problematization of Drugs
Family, vice, temperament.
Not knowing the harms to the body, drugs harm the family unit.
Spiritual/Disease Model [Drugs]
Internal sickness is incurable, one must find a higher power that helps you deal with it (Alcoholics Anonymous).
Disease Model [Drugs]
Disease and mental illness are biological, alcoholism is a brain disease.
Public Health Model [Drugs]
Treatment, prevention, education.
Political/Economic Model [Drugs]
Rates of drug use correlate with poverty, unemployment, and social marginalization.
Sociocultural Models [Drugs]
Cultural context (college campus, urban culture, etc.) informs use of drugs.
Marijuana
Weed became illegal at the same time alcohol was permitted again.
Associated with Mexicans, therefore become a crackdown on Mexicans, considered a “Mexican” problem.
1970s War on Drugs
Began in the Nixon administration, was largely tied to race.
Spending has hugely increased, yet addiction rates remain the same.
Reagan cracked down on drugs, but advertised tobacco.
The “Just Say No” and DARE campaigns actually led to more experimentation.
The New Jim Crow
Current incarceration system is an extension of Jim Crow, just through the law system/crime.
Shift from “race” as a focus of segregation and discrimination to “crime” - race punishment is not okay, but crime punishment is.
Affect of Incarceration
Felons are disenfranchised and suffer in labor and housing markets, they cannot receive welfare or food stamps.
70% of prisoners return in three years - incarceration results in further crime.
“Absent fathers” is a byproduct of incarceration.
Incarceration in the United States
Rates have increased, though rate of crime remains the same.
Prisons are owned by private companies with shareholdings - these companies are essentially paid to put people in jail.
There is a much larger return in investing in prisons versus regular companies.
Crack Cocaine vs. Powdered Cocaine
There is a larger sentence for crack (primarily African Americans) as compared to powdered (wealthy, college students).
RACE
“Faces of Meth” Campaign
Campaign uses fear was a deterrent (you don’t want to look like this).
Creates a hyperbolic and narrow representation of meth.
There is not statistics or contexts about how they lost their jobs, who uses the drug (no actual information).
Encourages spectacle of “white trash”.
Moralization of drug use - “Why would they do that to themselves?”
The Drug War in Latin America (Zirnite)
Increased military and intelligence presence in Latin America.
There is no proof that drug control policies limit the international drug flow, only that they increase violence.
College Students and Drugs
Rates of abuse are highest at competitive colleges.
Drugs are abused, but no one is punished.
Why ban the sale of cigarettes?
Toll on health
Black market already exists, no need to fear the “emergence” of a new market.
Addictive, cannot be used in moderation.
DALYs and Tobacco
Leading cause of DALYs in the U.S.
Causes more deaths then all other drugs combined.
> Legalized forms of consumption cause the most deaths.
Trans-Pacific Partnership (Obama)
Tobacco is included in the TPP (a free trade agreement) thus increasing the presence of tobacco in places with very little regulation.
King James and the Counterblast to Tobacco
Claimed that tobacco is sinning against God, harming the self, and should not be imported into Europe.
James Duke
First produced cigarettes in 1888.
Tobacco Advertising and Marketing
- Weight control for women
2. Rationed in WWI/II, globe learned to smoke because of American soldiers abroad.
Doctors and Smoking
1940/50s, doctors became key factor in encouraging smoking.
Medical conferences subsidized the tobacco industry, the public was manipulated into picking the “healthiest” cigarette.
*Physician Authority
1953 Tobacco Institute
Institute was created to reduce the idea that smoking is problem.
“Frank Statement”
The tobacco industry accepted people’s health as a basic responsibility, but believes their products are not harmful and do not cause death.
Data backing the “Frank Statement”
- No scientific link between smoking and cancer
- Medical research points to many causes for cancer.
- Science will be used to get all the facts as soon as possible.
Ernst Wynder
First to discover the link between tobacco and cancer [lung].
Lung cancer is prevalent [but rare] in non-smokers.
