Final - Main Concepts

Question 1

Psy-Disciplines and Psy-Complex

Answer 1

These terms describe the fields concerned with mental health and the regulation of mental processes, growing significantly in influence over the last 150 years.

Question 2

Medicalization and Biologization

Answer 2

The process by which conditions and behaviors are described and treated as medical issues, increasingly relying on biological explanations. This includes the shift in understanding mental illness (MI) through the lens of brain abnormalities and genetic predispositions.

Question 3

Psychoanalysis

Answer 3

Introduced by Freud, this theory and treatment method views mental illness as a result of unconscious conflicts within the mind. Despite its decline in popularity, its legacy continues to influence various psychotherapeutic modalities.

Question 4

Social Psychiatry and Community Mental Health

Answer 4

These approaches consider mental health within a societal and community context, emphasizing the social roots of mental health issues and advocating for social reforms alongside medical treatments.

Question 5

Deinstitutionalization

Answer 5

This movement aimed to close large psychiatric hospitals and treat individuals with mental health issues in community settings. The document critiques the resulting increase in homelessness and inadequate community support systems.

Question 6

Pharmaceuticalization

Answer 6

The increasing reliance on medications to manage and treat mental health conditions, often criticized for creating new conditions and focusing on symptom management rather than addressing underlying causes.

Question 7

Psycho-pharmaceutical Revolution

Answer 7

The period marked by the rapid development and adoption of psychiatric medications, which significantly altered treatment approaches and led to the decline of many traditional therapies.

Question 8

Global Mental Health (GMH)

Answer 8

A movement aiming to address mental health with a global perspective, focusing on improving access to mental health care worldwide, especially in low-income countries. It faces criticism for potentially imposing Western medical models on diverse cultures.

Question 9

Decolonizing Mental Health

Answer 9

A critique of the global mental health movement, calling for a recognition of diverse understandings of mental health and caution against the imposition of Western norms.

Question 10

Positive Psychology

Answer 10

Focuses on studying positive human functioning and strengths rather than just treating mental illness, aiming to foster flourishing rather than merely alleviating suffering.

Question 11

Mindfulness and Happiness Turn

Answer 11

These concepts are part of newer therapeutic approaches that emphasize individual responsibility for mental health through practices like mindfulness, critiqued for potentially ignoring the social and structural determinants of mental health.

Question 12

Psy-Disciplines and Psy-Complex Support

Answer 12

Medicalization of madhouses: The shift to viewing asylums and their inhabitants through a medical lens is a clear example of how psychological and psychiatric thought began to dominate perceptions of mental health.

Social Control Theory: This theory suggests that psychiatric practices are a form of social control, fitting under the broader psy-complex as it discusses the role of these disciplines in regulating society.

Question 13

Medicalization and Biologization Support

Answer 13

The Organic School: The belief in biological underpinnings for mental illness, highlighted by figures like Emil Kraepelin, supports the concept of medicalization by framing mental illness as a series of discrete biological diseases.

Psychosurgery: Procedures like lobotomy represent extreme forms of biologization, where mental health issues are treated through invasive medical procedures presumed to correct biological dysfunction.

Heredity (MI as genetic): The focus on genetic predispositions as explanations for mental illnesses, such as the historical views on the hereditary nature of deviance and mental illness, exemplifies the medicalization of behaviors and conditions previously understood in social or moral terms.

Symptomatology: The shift towards viewing mental health issues through a symptom-focused lens, paving the way for diagnostic systems like the DSM, further exemplifies the medicalization of mental health.

Question 14

Psychoanalysis Support

Answer 14

Freudian concepts: Freud’s ideas, such as the emphasis on unconscious conflicts, childhood experiences, and the structure of the psyche (id, ego, superego), are fundamental to psychoanalysis. His method of free association is a direct application of these theories.

Question 15

Social Psychiatry and Community Mental Health Support

Answer 15

The York Retreat: An example of early community mental health efforts, emphasizing kindness and social support over punishment and confinement, which contrasts with the medical model by focusing on the environment and community care.

Mental Hygiene Movement: This movement argued for preventative measures and public health approaches to mental health, integrating community-based interventions that reflect principles of social psychiatry.

WW2 and social psychiatry: Post-war enthusiasm for social missions in psychiatry to prevent conflict and promote stable societies underscores the role of social and community factors in mental health.

Question 16

Deinstitutionalization Support

Answer 16

Explosion in patient population: The rise in institutionalized individuals and subsequent push for deinstitutionalization illustrates how shifts in treatment settings were influenced by broader social and medical perceptions of mental health.

Legacies of psychosurgery and controversies: The backlash against invasive treatments like lobotomy contributed to the push for deinstitutionalization, advocating for less restrictive and community-based care settings.

Question 17

Pharmaceuticalization Support

Answer 17

Psychopharmaceutical Revolution: The introduction of medications like Chlorpromazine, which transformed the management of schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses, exemplifies the pharmaceuticalization of mental health.

Chlorpromazine’s introduction: Often cited as the beginning of the modern era of psychopharmacology, this demonstrates pharmaceuticalization by moving treatment from psychotherapy and hospitalization to medication.

Pharmaceuticalization of life enhancers: The expansion of medication use beyond treating illness to enhancing everyday life reflects the broadening scope of pharmaceutical interventions.

Question 18

GMH Support

Answer 18

Globalizing mental health initiatives: Efforts to standardize mental health care across different cultural contexts are central to the GMH movement, which aims to elevate mental health on the global health agenda.

Critiques on the universal applicability of Western psychiatric models: These critiques challenge GMH initiatives that often export Western models of mental health care without sufficient adaptation to local cultural contexts.

Question 19

Decolonizing Mental Health Support

Answer 19

Critiques of GMH: The criticism that GMH may impose Western mental health models on non-Western cultures supports the need for decolonizing mental health by valuing and integrating indigenous and local practices.

Cultural critiques of GMH: Arguments that GMH overlooks cultural specifics and imposes a one-size-fits-all approach align with calls for decolonizing mental health, which advocates for integrating diverse cultural understandings into global mental health practices.

Question 20

Positive Psychology Support

Answer 20

The Happiness Turn: This concept, which emphasizes achieving measurable happiness and well-being, aligns with positive psychology’s focus on fostering positive attributes and strengths rather than merely treating disorders.

Question 21

Mindfulness and Happiness Turn Support

Answer 21

Mindfulness critiques: The critique that mindfulness aligns with neoliberal values by emphasizing individual responsibility for health reflects the broader discussion on how happiness and mindfulness are integrated into current mental health practices.

Mindfulness as a non-medical practice yet reinforcing distress as illness: This paradox highlights the critique that while mindfulness aims to empower individuals, it may also reinforce the medicalization of normal life stresses by framing them as issues needing therapeutic intervention.

Question 22

Transition from Madness to Mental Illness

Answer 22

Early understandings of mental health categorized issues under “madness” rather than structured diagnoses.
Evidence:
- Vagrancy Act of 1714: distinguished between “pauper lunatics” and criminals, initiating the confinement of mentally ill individuals, funded by taxes, as a measure to ensure public safety.
- The York retreat: emphasized kindness over punishment, introducing “moral treatment” as a means of addressing madness

Question 23

Medicalization

Answer 23

Mental health evolved from spiritual and social domains into a medical field, where conditions were increasingly seen as biologically rooted.
Evidence:
- Emil Kraepelin: emphasized that mental disorders were discrete, biological diseases with specific symptoms, courses, and treatments
- DSM development: addition of Gender Identity Disorder (DSM III) and later Gender Dysphoria (DSM 5), exemplify the process of defining and redefining behaviors and identities as medical conditions
- Eugenics: used medical arguments to justify sterilization programs for those deemed mentally unfit, further medicalizing societal fears about “degeneration”

Question 24

Power and Control

Answer 24

Psychiatry has been criticized as a tool for enforcing social norms and power.
- Foucault critique: described psychiatry as defining “normality,” creating boundaries for acceptable behavior and justifying interventions in people’s lives
- Total institutions: escribed how asylums replaced individuality with institutional identities, stripping patients of autonomy
- social control theory: posited that asylums were “dumping grounds” for social outcasts, reinforcing societal order

Question 25

Eugenics and Heredity

Answer 25

The belief in hereditary mental illness led to harmful practices such as forced sterilizations under the eugenics movement
- 20th C rise: romoted sterilization programs and policies to prevent those with mental illnesses from reproducing
- Nazi T4 program: targeted mentally ill individuals, testing systems later used during the Holocaust
- Lombroso: suggested that physical appearance could predict criminality, fueling discrimination and national fears of degeneration

Question 26

Social Psychiatry

Answer 26

Community mental health initiatives in the mid-20th century sought to address societal issues but were limited by political and financial constraints
- Social psychiatry movement: studies found that mental health issues often stemmed from socioeconomic conditions rather than purely biological causes
- Community mental health act: aimed to replace asylums with community-based mental health care, signaling a shift toward systemic approaches
- mental hygiene: argued that it was easier to prevent mental illness by focusing on societal reforms and psychoeducation

Question 27

Deinstitutionalization

Answer 27

The move away from asylums to community care
- institution critiques: criticized for inhumane conditions, leading to deinstitutionalization in favor of community care
- Ashley smith: illustrates the failures of the carceral system as a replacement for mental health care. Her death, following years of segregation and mistreatment in prison, highlights the inadequacies of this approach
- trans-institutionalization: the shift of mentally ill individuals from hospitals to prisons—exacerbated issues rather than solving them.

Question 28

Global Mental Health Movement

Answer 28

The push to globalize mental health care often imposes Western frameworks on non-Western cultures
- Lancet’s Global Mental Health Movement: promoted scaling up mental health services worldwide but often imposed Western frameworks on non-Western cultures, disregarding local contexts
- Latvia Case: the traditional concept of nervi was replaced by “depression,” reflecting the global standardization of mental health diagnoses, often at the expense of cultural relevance
- Colonialism

Question 29

Marginalization

Answer 29

• Gender and psychiatry: Hysteria, Female Orgasmic disorder, psychoanalysis (framed women’s neuroses as stemming from “penis envy” and depicted them as cold, frigid, or irrational if they transgressed gender norms)
• LGBTQ+ Communities: Gender Dysphoria, Fruit Machine,
• Racial Marginalization: Black patients made up 21% of the patient population in British hospitals despite being only 7% of the general population. They were also more likely to receive severe diagnoses like schizophrenia, Protest Psychosis (reframed civil rights activism by African American men as a symptom of schizophrenia, linking justified anger with mental instability. )

Question 30

Institutions Shaping Mental Health

Answer 30

Institutions like asylums, hospitals, prisons, and community care centers have historically served as mechanisms for managing and controlling mental illness
- Asylums: 19th century were designed as moral and therapeutic spaces but often devolved into overcrowded custodial facilities
- Residential Care Facilities and Prisons: sites of mental health care highlights ongoing issues in managing the mentally ill within societal structures
- Total Institutions: where patients are stripped of individuality and agency

Question 31

Psychiatry and Power Structures

Answer 31

Psychiatry has often been used as a tool to reinforce existing power structures, from colonial projects to authoritarian regimes
- Colonial psychiatry: created racialized stereotypes to justify imperial control, such as labeling colonized populations as impulsive or childlike
- Soviet Union: Psychiatry was weaponized to silence political dissent, using diagnoses like “sluggish schizophrenia” to confine dissidents
- “psychologization” of terrorism: the War on Terror reframed political and social issues as mental health concerns, often based on flawed methodologies

Question 32

Control (General)

Answer 32

• Colonial psych
• Soviet Union
• Marginalization
• Sterilization (Eugenics)
• Total institutions