Lecture 3

Question 1

The psychological-behavioural model suggests that mental illness is a disease caused by biological dysfunctions
true or fals

Answer 1

false

Question 2

According to the WHO, approximately how many people globally are estimated to live with depression?

Answer 2

• 322 million

Question 3

What are blood tests or scanning technologies primarily used for?

Answer 3

• to rule out other medical conditions
• not to confirm diagnostic tests or to develop treatment plans

Question 4

What does somatic mean?

Answer 4

• physical or biological

Question 5

What is the whig history approach

Answer 5

• critiqued as misrepresentative of actual history and an oversimplification
• human progress is assumed to be inevitable and positive, evolving but always improving, focus on key figures and events
• “in this type of recounting, humans of the past lived their lives shrouded in a metaphorical darkness; over time, however, scientific advances shed increasing amounts of light”
• life does not necessarily get better, although improvements happen
• women often underrepresented

Question 6

What is the social history approach?

Answer 6

• considers not only key things, but also the daily lives of ordinary people and how they may have experienced cultural or scientific change

Question 7

What was the belief of madness before the 18th century?

Answer 7

• belief that strange cognitive and behavioural symptoms might be caused by disease
• historical understandings of madness and its causes and characteristics have always been very diverse

Question 8

What are the 4 ways madness was explain in relation to diverse causes

Answer 8

• demonic possession (spirits)
• misfortune in love (negative tragic experience)
• head injuries (physical cause)
• bodily humours (ancient humoural theory)

Question 9

What are 4 ways societies treated madness?

Answer 9

• trepanning
• religious ceremonies
• beatings
• counterspells

Question 10

What is trepanning?

Answer 10

a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull.

Question 11

When and where were hospitals to house those deemed “mad” first developed?

Answer 11

• in early Islamic societies starting in the 19th century, and later appeared in Europe

Question 12

When did madness became to be known as mental illness?

Answer 12

late 18th century

Question 13

What does medicalization refer to

Answer 13

• refers to the process where a condition becomes understood as something that should be treated by physicians
• mental illness became medicalized through a long process
• although mental illness was considered to be a medical problem, non-medical treatments continued to be used and to eveolve

Question 14

What are the factors contributing to the medicalization of mental illness?

Answer 14

• challenges to the authority and power of the Church in Europe (was losing influence)
• the Scientific Revolution (idea that science could solve problems and explain the natural world - so many discoveries, dissection of humans, can actually see the disease, science giving reason and evidence)
• the Enlightenment - skepticism about religion (focus on rationality/reason)
• increased urbanization - led to increased visibility of people who appeared “mad” and perceived as “dangerous” (public attention increased and states increasingly incarcerated, institutional care increased - charitable homes, for-profit “madhouses”)

Question 15

What did the transformation into mental illness do?

Answer 15

• shift to increasinly seeing madness as a medical problem
• people increasingly being seen as victims of madness and not to be blamed
• medicalization challenged religious explanations for madness

Question 16

Explain the rise of physicians

Answer 16

• scientists and physicians became more respected in society
• doctors formed professional organizations and bodies
• physicians were seen to function as a protection against wrongful confinement

Question 17

What were the physicians made to be responsible for?

Answer 17

• inspecting and licensing asylums (regulation_
• also public attention to poor conditions of madhouses increased

Question 18

What are the 2 different major arguments posed by historians to understand the rise of the asylum era?

Answer 18

• moral treatment and social control

Question 19

explain moral treatment

Answer 19

• reason for emergence of the asylum era
• often pointed as the foundation of the asylum movement in the treatment of mental illness
• philosophy that emphasized humane treatment rather than restraint and punishment and attempted to restore mental health
• supposed to be a temporary situation

Question 20

What was the goal of the moral treatment?

Answer 20

• ending dehumanizing treatment in madhouses
• to build asylums providing active treatment
• calm environment for people to learn new skills, work, engage in recreational activities
• aspirational (an ideal), as few asylums lived up to this standard
• deemed a noble but failed experiment to better manage mental illness

Question 21

What was the failure of asylums blamed on?

Answer 21

• overcrowding, insufficient funding and understaffing

Question 22

Explain social control as a reason for emergence of the sylum era

Answer 22

• critical perspective by Foucault and Scull in efforts to remove “problematic people” from society
• individuals deemed problematic due to behaviour that violated social norms were defined as mentally ill, and needed to be confined and “corrected” in workhouses, prisons and asylums
• Foucault points to the practice of moving “undesirable” peopel to workhouses and prisons as a form of “social control”

Question 23

How did these theorists see psychiatrists

Answer 23

• as agents of control, rather than providers of care, whose role was to enact discipline on unruly bodies

Question 24

What did social control frame

Answer 24

• framed the problem of mental illness that asylums are not a solution to growing population of mentally ill people,,but precursor
• once established, they were filled as unwanted behaviours were increasingly defined as reimagined and relabeled as “mental illness”

Question 25

What is the critique of asylums at the end of 19th century

Answer 25

• places of confinement rather than curing
• this view says it is not a failure but indication that the confinement movement was achieving its initial purpose
• a hidden agenda that was succeeding