Final - Chapter 8: Mental Disorder

Question 1

1. What is the common cold of mental illness?

Answer 1

Depression

Question 2

2. List popular myths of mental illness

Answer 2

1. Mentally ill are weird and disturbed.
2. Mental illness is incurable.
3. The mentally ill can be distinguished from healthy.
4. The mentally ill are crazed, violent and dangerous.
5. We are likely depressed in winter because of cold and no sun.

Question 3

3. Identify: Organic vs Functional mental disorders

Answer 3

• Organic mental disorder is caused by damage to the brain (ex. tumor, head injury, viral menegitis)
• Functional mental disorders result from psychological and social factors (ex. Unpleasant childhood, interpersonal conflict, social stress)

Question 4

4. Rosenhan’s Study

Answer 4

1. Healthy associates faked hallucinations to gain admittance to mental health institutions. After admittance patience felt fine. Most were diagnosed with schizophrenia after released.
2. Hospital identified people not sent by Rosenthal
   (WE CAN NOT DISTINGUISH SANE FROM INSANE IN PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS)

Question 5

5. Identify: Network therapy

Answer 5

Lay (normal) people work with mentally ill people. It is a substance-abuse treatment approach that engages members of the patient’s social support network to support abstinence. Usually can’t find people to do it with because most people do not want to work with a mentally ill person. Proven to have a better success rate than seeing a psychiatrist unless, it’s a severe mental disorder.

Question 6

6. Thomas Szasz - Mental illness as a Myth

Answer 6

LABELING - He believes that it does not make sense to classify psychological problems as disease or illnesses. “Mental illness” inappropriate metaphor and there are no true illnesses of the mind. Distinction between physical and mental.

Question 7

7. Identify: Scheff’s residual deviance

Answer 7

LABELING -206 page bottom The diverse kinds of deviance rises from organic, psychological and stress causes, caused by acts of rebellion. Stereotypes of residual deviance are learned through the behavior

• Tomas Scheff’s term for mental illness thinks term mental illness carries tom much of a stigma. He doesn’t want to call it that. Diverse kinds of rule breaking for which our society has no explicit label. Labels for a lot of deviant behavior. Ex: murder, pedophilia, etc. Sometimes we see behavior as rule breaking but doesn’t fit neatly in any category, or we don’t understand why that person did it, so it goes to the residual deviant category.
• Know what residual deviance is: most goes unnoticed, or we rationalize it. “Just eccentric behavior” when we rationalize something.
• Also argues that we all have days where we are mentally ill, we have these periods. It can be days, hours, or weeks.
• The stereotypes of mental disorders are learned early in life. We learn these stereotypes in everyday interactions. Ex: “are you crazy, are you nuts, and are you out of your mind?!”
• Social constructionist POV. He thinks what we suffer from is problems with facing our problems.