LEC 1 - What is Mental Health/Illness

Question 1

What is the DSM?

Answer 1

List of every mental illness and the symptoms associated to be diagnosed with the illness

Question 2

Criticisms of the DSM

Answer 2

Issues with Validity: No one can actually prove that disorders exist
- Cant scan a brain to give definitive answers
There are no explanation about the way people actually feel when they have to live with an illness
Defining mentally ill creates a definition about what is mentally healthy

Question 3

Qualities of Mental Health

Answer 3

• Not fixed in place
• ever changeable and flexible
• definition changes with society

Question 4

Contentious Topics

Answer 4

Diseases: Mental illness viewed as disease, meaning it must be dealt by doctors (psychiatrists view this as harnmful and oppressive because there is no set cause and fix to each ‘disease’)
What Qualifies as good mental health: There is no set list that determines good/bad mental health

Question 5

DSM Definition of Mental health

Answer 5

A clinically significant disturbance, an individuals cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour, dysfunction in psychological, biological or developmental process, significant distress or disability associated with it

Question 6

Mental Illness Definition

Answer 6

disruption in domains (something about their thoughts, moods or behaviours is not desirable/correct)

Question 7

Mental Disorder Definition

Answer 7

Specific types of mental illness (anxiety disorder, panic disorder, etc.)
- Is diagnosed

Question 8

Differentiation between mental and physical health

Answer 8

Mental disorders aren’t diagnosed to a physical organ (it is diagnosed to the whole human)
Assumptions and stigma made by being diagnosed with a mental disorder
Mental illness isn’t always negative

Question 9

History of Uncertainty

Answer 9

Never a consensus about what causes mental illness

Question 10

Psychological/Behavioural Model

Answer 10

Disorders are in the mind

Question 11

First Version (Social Model)

Answer 11

Accepts the existence of mental disorders
Assumes that social structures act as determinants and causes
People with fewer resources, will develop mental illness easier
People with a higher rank in society are less likely to be mentally ill

Question 12

Second Version (Social Model)

Answer 12

Mental illness is a social construct
They are inventions of humans to label people as sick
Skeptical about existence of disorders
Behaviours, thoughts and feelings are more likely to be labelled as illness
What we label as mentally ill is a reflection of society
- Only labelling people because their behaviours don’t match the desirable actions of societies norms

Question 13

Why so many models?

Answer 13

One model may work for one situation but not another
- Medical models work better for schizophrenia than eating disorders
People find one model offensive
Some groups benefit from one model more than another

Question 14

Determining clinical significance

Answer 14

Important because this label changes a persons value (if they need medications, accommodations’, if the person is treated differently from the rest of the population)

Question 15

Difficulty with Diagnoses

Answer 15

Subjectivity
Co-Morbidity
Heterogeneity
Biases
Culture

Question 16

Subjectivity (Diagnoses)

Answer 16

where is the line drawn between mentally ill and normal distress
- Gary Greenberg: If I don’t determine the clinical significance, I don’t get paid
- The issue is that they aren’t always sure about their diagnose

Question 17

Co-Morbidity (Diagnoses)

Answer 17

having multiple illnesses at the same time
- Should we understand that person has multiple illnesses or should we understand that they are all interconnected

Question 18

Heterogeneity (Diagnoses)

Answer 18

A person must have 5 of the 10 symptoms
- People may get diagnosed with the same thing but they don’t share the same symptoms

Question 19

Biases (Diagnoses)

Answer 19

Race, gender, class, weight factors determine the way in which someone is diagnosed

Question 20

Culture (Diagnoses)

Answer 20

Shapes something is judged or if something is reported as a symptoms
- Ex. In some cultures it is okay to hear voices

Question 21

How common are mental disorders?

Answer 21

• 24%-50% of people report symptoms of mental disorders at some point in their life

Question 22

Why are people more likely to get diagnosed now

Answer 22

Less stigma: people feel more accepted to come forward
There is something that has changed in our life
- Phones, social media

Question 23

Medicalization

Answer 23

When something not medical becomes medical
- Something not defined as a mental illness gets redefined as a symptom of a illness