Mental Illness P2

Question 1

Social Control of Mental Illness

Answer 1

• Social control measures can have both + and - outcomes
• Primary measures of social control are:
  1) Stigmitization
  2) Medicalization

Question 2

Stigmitization

Answer 2

• Negative attitudes have not improved
• Discrimination in empolyment, housing, health care (remember peter)
• Negative consequences of stigmitization
  ↳ Personal experiences are not necessary for negative consequences: mere knowledge - decreases self esteem
  ↳ Mere awareness of stigmitization of mental illness: self-stigma
  - Internalization of mentally ill label
  - less likely to seek treatment

Question 3

Medicalization

Answer 3

• Stigmitization of mental illness in society –> lack of funding
• Medicalization of mentally ill people is a form of socia control
  ↳ Not always focused on improving their lives and functioning better
• Treatments of mental illness has changed:
  ↳ Religious Rituals: mentally ill people may have been labelled as witches or an allegiance with the devil
  ↳ Madhouses: a warehousing of people who were mentally ill (we need to seperate peole who are mentally ill so we “feel safe”)
  ↳ Asylum: We can treat people to behave dif & conform to social norms; turned out thes places were barbaric and dehumanized patients

Question 4

Total Institutions

Answer 4

• defined as a place of residence & work where a large number of like-situated people are cut off from wider society
• Mental hospitals are a social and cultural institution
• If we isolate mentally ill people it suggest we think they are dangerous or they can’t take care of themselves

Question 5

Deinstitutionalization

Answer 5

• Treatment with communities rather than institutions
• Has improved the life quality og many people
• The reason why this method is failing is because people fall through the cracks

Question 6

What Makes Deinstitutionalization effective or ineffective?

Answer 6

• When effective it requires:
  ↳ a supportive family network
  ↳ an accepting community
  ↳ Adequate community resources
• When ineffective it can lead to:
  1) Homelessness
  
  • 25%-50% of homeless people have mental disorders
    2) Criminality
• Living in stigmatizing can be just as duhumanizing as institutions
  Note: homeless people use meth as a safety strat so they can keep on guard from risk of others but it puts them at risk of drug abuse

Question 7

Crime & Mental Illness

Answer 7

• Disproportionate amount of inamtes suffer from mental disorders, and severe mental disorders
• Criminality: additional layer of stigma
• Hydraulic relationship between mental health care system and criminal justice system

Question 8

“Deviance Dance”

Answer 8

• Resisting stigmitization
• Resisting inadequate care
• Resisting medicalization

Question 9

Resisting Stigmitization

Answer 9

• Embedded withing the discrimination paradigm
  ↳ emphasizes the role that stigmatization plays in the daily experiences of people with mental illnesses

Question 10

• Formal .vs. informal level of resisting stigmitization

Answer 10

• Formal level:
  ↳ Public education
  ↳ Human rights legislation
• Informal level –> stigma managemnt techniques
  ↳ Trying to pass
  ↳ Dividing social worlds - carefully managing who knows wabout your mental illness because you’re worried about how you’ll be perceivedd
  ↳ Deflecting - Looking at depictions of mental illness and not identifying with it or saying your not mentall ill
  ↳ Challenging - if anyone says something bad about mental illness you directly confront them on the offensiveness of the statement

Question 11

Resisting Medicalization: The DSM

Answer 11

• Debates over categories of “mental disorders”
  ↳ Do children acc have ADHD or are they just very hyper
  ↳ Are we blaming kids for a medical issue when its a social issure

Question 12

Rosenhan study (1973)

Answer 12

• “If sanity and insanity exist, then how shall we know them?”
• Can we distinguish the 2
  ↳ do the characteristics lie in the individual or the environment
• Rosenhan created 8 pseudo-patients to be institutionalized
  ↳ the goal was to try & get released as quick as possible while cooperating with staff & honestly answering everything asked
• Waiting for cafeteria and taking notes was a “symptom” of schizo
  ↳ lots of overdiagnosing for regular behaviour as participants were just bored
• The larges things that push diagnosis are formed by the environment they look at
  ↳ we need to be cautious that doctors are not diagnosing peopl incorrectly