mental illness Flashcards
History - Trepanning
- Drill a hold into a person’s head to relieve pressure
- thought madness was caused by building up of pressure in the head and this is how they treated them
History - Greeks
- imbalance of the bodily humorous (fluids) = unhealthy
- Hippocrates was greatly influenced by this theory and he came up with a theory for mental illness
- Spoke out about phobias – one of the first people in the West to do so
- Physician to reject supernatural causes for illness
- Proper treatment is physiological
History - Medieval Ages (12 to 15th century)
- if you were mentally ill, you had moral issues
- Illness was a divine punishment
- sick because you were sinful and God is punishing you
- Fasting and prayer is the treatmen
History - 16 - 18th century
- workhouses
- Madhouses; people who were poor, ill, and unable to work
- Harsh treatments were thought to be therapeutic: whipping, confining, throwing cold water
- Mentally ill were regarded as wild animals
- Barbaric treatments; people were put on display
- Restraints + forceful confinement wasn’t uncommon
History - 19th century
- specific syndromes
- E.g. first official talk of schizophrenia
- John Reill (1808) coined the term psychiatry
- Recognition of what mental illness really is and changes in methods
Modern Approach - Medical Model + Skepticism?
- Mental illness as something not unlike a disease
- Physical + biological in nature. Something that in theory can be fixed
- Conceptualization of psychological disorders as diseases that, like physical diseases, have biological causes, define symptoms and possible cures
- Skepticism: not every action or thought can be traced to an underlying disease
Diagnosis? Symptoms? Syndrome
Diagnosis: determine nature of mental disease by assessing symptoms
Symptoms: behaviours, thoughts, emotions suggesting an underlying abnormal syndrome
Syndrome: coherent cluster of symptoms due to a single cause
Deinstitutionalization + Problem?
- New emphasis on deinstitutionalizing people
- Trying to get more and more mentally ill people out of hospitals and back home
- People are better in a familiar environment in which they feel comfortable
- Problem: a lot of mentally ill people don’t have a home to return to
- ¼ of schizophrenics live on the streets, many turn homeless
Impact of chlorpromazine
- First mass-manufactured drug treatment for schizophrenia
- until then there was no sensible treatment for schizophrenia besides a lobotomy and electrical treatment
Key symptoms of Illness? (3)
Disturbance, Distress, internal
KS of I - Disturbances
o Important
- Key symptoms of illness
o Disturbances
See a marked disturbance in either behaviour, thinking, or in affect (emotion)
E.g. so afraid of outside spaces that you can’t leave your house to go shopping
E.g. if you think the door next door is controlling your thoughts
E.g. seriously considering suicide because of your depression
o Distress
A problem (e.g. “I just can’t go to work anymore”)
o Internal
Source of your problem is not reasonable
It’s something that you yourself think up
E.g. you still want to commit suicide despite having a loving family
KS of I - Distress? Internal?
- Distress: A problem (e.g. “I just can’t go to work anymore”)
- Internal: source of your problem is not reasonable, it’s something that you yourself think up
- E.g. you still want to commit suicide despite having a loving family
Causes - integrated of biological? psychological? environmental?
- Biological: genetic influences, biochemical imbalances, structural abnormalities of the brain
- Psychological: maladaptive learning and coping, cognitive biases, dysfunctional attitudes, interpersonal problems
- Environmental: poor socialization, stressful life circumstances, cultural and social inequities
Diathesis-stress model
- Most disorders have both internal (biological and psychological) and external (environmental) causes
- person may be predisposed for a psychological disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress
- genetic precursor for an illness which is turned on by some environmental event
DS model - diathesis? stress? twins and schizophrenia?
- diathesis = internal predisposition (like genetics)
- Stress = external trigger
- Identical twins – environmental key
- One goes throughout life and doesn’t have that environmental key =no schizophrenia
- Second twin was abused and took drugs, and this causes the schizophrenia
- Combination of genetic precursor + important environmental event (key)
