LEC 9 - Critical Perspectives

Question 1

Crossroads with asylums and psychopharma..

Answer 1

Those confined to asylums for most of their lives are now living in the community d/t psychopharmaceuticals

Question 2

Foucault

Answer 2

Calls into question many of the dominant assumptions of psychiatry; goes
after the whole idea of mental illness itself
- New optimism around medicine that can solve these strange/abnormal
behaviours
- Psychiatrists locking up “unreasonables” who didn’t fit into the new social system

Question 3

R.D Laing

Answer 3

biological psychiatry has no understanding of physical
pathology; contravened conventions of medicine
- Context is crazy, not the person
- psychotic symptoms were attempts to communicate

Question 4

David Cooper

Answer 4

Coined the term anti-psychiatry
- Viewed psychiatry as a system of the powerful put in place to put
weaker people in their place
- Saw mentally ill people are more real; trying to live authentic lives (not conforming to social norms)

Question 5

Erving Goffman

Answer 5

Asylums don’t rehabilitate people to be prepared to be integrated back
into the outside world
- Patients only deemed “healthy” when ready to be serviced
- Place of punishment, not healing

Question 6

Scheff and Labelling Theory

Answer 6

Mental illness is the result of a powerless individual caught doing
something deviant by socially powerful others, who then label that person as mentally ill
- labels shape identities
- Psychiatry is a powerful social tool that regulates deviance and
maintains the social order

Question 7

Thomas Szasz

Answer 7

mental illness is not a real illness, rather a construction to
describe those with “problems in living”
- if this was a real illness there would be a clear marker
(lesion on the brain, identifiable in autopsies, etc.)

Question 8

Szaszian Criticism of Psychiatry as Science

Answer 8

What psychiatrists do is actually dependent on whatever the
psychiatrists says s/he does as there is no clear definition or rules to play by; not scientific
- Attacked historicity in psychiatry
- if someone wants to
harm themselves, they should be allowed to freely do what they want
- Rejects any kind of coercive treatment (forced confinement, forced treatment, forced ECT, etc.)

Question 9

Szasz and Libertarianism

Answer 9

emotions and actions are repressed (cured) through pseudomedical interventions
- Drug use, smoking, overeating, gambling, shoplifting, sexual
promiscuity, paedophilia, shyness, anxiety, unhappiness, and suicide
are all considered diseases or symptoms of diseases (medicalization)

Question 10

Ken Kesey

Answer 10

mentally ill are just deviants, rebels that refuse to play by society’s rules

Question 11

Deinstitutionalization

Answer 11

Psychiatric medication the driving force behind deinstitutionalization (people were not able to manage symptoms and be re-integrated into society)
- fewer admissions to
psychiatric hospitals; once able, patients should be released from
hospital
- Mentally ill people should not be segregated from society

Question 12

Failure of Deinstitutionalization

Answer 12

Funds saved from hospitals never went to community care
- Hospitals closed as funds were cut
- People in and out of hospitals
- False freedom

Question 13

Consumer / Survivor Movement

Answer 13

Comprised of individuals and advocacy organizations that represent former (and current) patients of mental health services
- Advocate for the rights of those with mental illness
- Aim to restore power balance

Question 14

Consumer

Answer 14

Empowered and chooses to see a psychiatrist; chooses to get
certain treatment; freedom of choice, not coerced by doctors

Question 15

Survivor

Answer 15

shares goals with consumer movement of balance between patient to practitioner; surviving the harmful aspects of the psychiatric system

Question 16

The Recovery Model

Answer 16

Defined by the individual rather than the psychiatrist; an attempt to take power back and reclaim ownership over mental health
- Rather than call it a cure, it should be called recovery
- cure means that there is a finite end but with mental health
- Strengths base approach rather than pathological view

Question 17

Dianetics

Answer 17

System of talk-based intervention that is supposed to
improve a persons well being; boost intelligence, make you happier, more energetic, etc.

Question 18

Scientology and Psychiatry

Answer 18

Dianetics solves the unconscious mind problems (engrams) that cause irrational behavior and emotions, lower intelligence
- Hubbard tries to destroy psychiatry; claims it to be anti-freedom, antihuman, state of tyranny; blames everything negative on psychiatry

Question 19

Citizens Commission on Human Rights

Answer 19

• Claim psychiatry is driven entirely by profit
• psychiatrists (not drug companies) are behind mass proliferation of drugs as they have
  tricked companies into thinking they work as part of the attempt to
  control the minds of people
• Blame psychiatry for: school shootings, mass drugging of children, 9/11, etc.

Question 20

Impacts of Antipsychiatry

Answer 20

Made coercive confinement and treatment more difficult
- Helped usher in deinstitutionalization
- Put patient rights front and center
- Helped open up psychiatry to novel approaches