This seminal early work of Foucault is indispensable to understanding his development as a thinker. Written in 1954 and revised in 1962, _Mental Illness and Psychology _delineates the shift that occurred in Foucault's thought during this period. The first iteration reflects the philosopher's early interest in and respect for Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition. The second part, rewritten in 1962, marks a dramatic change in Foucault's thinking. Examining the history of madness as a social and cultural construct, he (...) moves outside of the psychoanalytic tradition into the radical critique of Freud that was to dominate his later work. _Mental Illness and Psychology _is an important document tracing the intellectual evolution of this influential thinker. A foreword by Foucault scholar Hubert Dreyfus situates the book within the framework of Foucault's entire body of work. (shrink)

In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior.

Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine: From Celsus to Paul of Aeginatraces the history of conceptions of mental disorder in Graeco-Roman medical writings, from the 1st century BCE to the 7th CE, with detailed studies of all significant authors.

In The Rules of Insanity, Carl Elliott draws on philosophy and psychiatry to develop a conceptual framework for judging the moral responsibility of mentally ill offenders. Arguing that there is little useful that can be said about the responsibility of mentally ill offenders in general, Elliott looks at specific mental illnesses in detail; among them schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorders, psychosexual disorders such as exhibitionism and voyeurism, personality disorders, and impulse control disorders such as kleptomania and pyromania. He takes a particularly (...) hard look at the psychopath or sociopath, who many have argued is incapable of understanding morality. Making extensive use of psychiatric case histories, Elliott explores the various ways in which mental illness can affect a person's intentions and thus excuse him or her from moral responsibility. (shrink)

Revisiting the history of postwar LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) research illuminates how the work of a chemist at the Rockefeller Institute contributed to the development of a biochemical paradigm for mental functioning. Dilworth Wayne Woolley proposed one of the first theories of the biochemistry of mental illness based on empirical evidence. His research with LSD and serotonin had wide-ranging repercussions for pharmacology and fit neatly into the emerging medicalization of mental illness. Reevaluating Woolley’s ideas (...) and the fruits of psychopharmacology leads to possible new approaches toward mental health and illness when considered alongside lessons learned from past research with psychedelic substances, and exemplifies a broader paradigm shift in cultural studies toward a biopsychosocial model that acknowledges the intersections between biology and culture. (shrink)

How might critical realism provide a better metatheoretical framework to understand the complex causality behind experiences of mental illness? How do we understand the agency of people suffering from mental illness? Prior work on critical realism and disability has argued that critical realism helps move past one or another form of reductionist explanations for illness, whether that is biological, environmental or psychological. But using a critical realist framework to study mental illness also raises (...) issues about the agency of people whose rational capacities are thought to be diminished. In this article, I present the life history of one of 26 young adults I interviewed as part of a project on resilience. Because interviews reveal the complex causal forces in any person's life, they remind us that scientific explanations should not be reductionistic. Human agency can be diminished by biological illness, power structures in psychiatry, and cultural categories of mental illness diagnoses. But a critical realist framework allows me to explore how people who experience mental illness still exercise their capacity to reflect on the moral ends to which to direct their actions. (shrink)

This book is psychiatry's reply to the diverse group of antipsychiatrists, including Laing, Foucault, Goffman, Szasz and Bassaglia, that has made fashionable the view that mental illness is merely socially deviant behaviour and that psychiatrists are agents of the capitalist society seeking to repress such behaviour. It establishes, by the use of evidence from historical and transcultural studies, that mental illness has been recognised in all cultures since the beginning of history and goes on to (...) explore the philosophical and medical basis for psychiatry's diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Finally, it tackles two issues where psychiatry has recently been seen as at odds with the values prevailing in society: involuntary hospitalization and the insanity defence. The Reality of Mental Illness does not pretend to offer simple answers to the complex problems it discusses, but will leave the reader with a much greater understanding of psychiatry's aims, practices and problems. (shrink)

Pictures in historical chapters of textbooks convey information about the values and assumptions of the authors’professions and the larger culture. We scrutinized 15 recent abnormal psychology textbooks for reproductions of art created before 1900. Thirteen works appeared in three or more textbooks. Overall, these pictures support a “Whiggish” account of history that celebrates the present and gives a distorted, incomplete rendering of the past. The 13 pictures tended to depict the mentally ill as an underclass who are released from (...) their literal and metaphorical shackles by men who are “ahead of their time” in their struggles against prevailing ignorance. The pictures also emphasized the difference of the mentally ill by presenting a catalogue of stereotypic visual elements attributed to insanity throughout Western history. We argue for the inclusion in textbooks of “history for the sake of the past” as a way of genuinely engaging different ideologies and thereby stimulating interest in our own implicit values and biases. (shrink)

With advances in genetic technology, there are increasing concerns about the way in which genetic information may be abused, particularly in people at increased genetic risk of developing certain disorders. In a recent case in Hong Kong, the court ruled that it was unlawful for the civil service to discriminate in employment, for the sake of public safety, against people with a family history of mental illness. The plaintiffs showed no signs of any mental health problems (...) and no genetic testing was performed. This was the first case concerning genetic discrimination in common law jurisdictions, therefore the court's judgment has implications for how genetic discrimination cases may be considered in the future. The court considered it inappropriate to apply population statistics or lifetime risks to individuals while examining fitness for work. It recommended an individualised assessment of specific risks within the job, relative to other risks posed by that workplace. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Should Clinicians’ Views of Mental Illness Influence the DSM?Elizabeth H. Flanagan (bio) and Roger K. Blashfield (bio)Keywordsclinicians, DSM, values, psychopathology, scienceThe relationship between clinicians and the DSM is complex. Clinicians are the primary intended audience of the DSM. However, as Widiger (2007) pointed out in his commentary, there is a tension associated with trying to meet the clinical goals of the DSM and also trying to optimize (...) the scientific goals of the DSM. Most commentators would agree that the recent editions of the DSM (from the DSM-III onward) have favored scientific values (e.g., Sadler 2005). Some commentators have taken sides and aligned themselves with either clinicians or with the science of classification. For instance, Garb (2005) has argued that clinicians should receive incentives to align themselves more closely with the science of the DSM. In contrast, Westen and Shedler (1999) have favored a clinician-based approach to the DSM and have argued that an ideal classification should be based on the prototypes that clinicians use to conceptualize diagnostic categories. Perhaps an extreme suggestion on how to deal with this tension between the values of clinicians and the values of scientists is to adopt the ICD-10 solution and create two versions of the next DSM. One version would be written for clinicians and another for researchers (Phillips et al. 2003).Widiger (2007) wondered whether the two of us as authors are on the fence about how the views of clinicians should affect the DSM. As clinical psychologists who are both clinicians and researchers, we understand his comment, especially in light of our attempt in our article not to overgeneralize from the time-consuming, labor-intensive, yet methodologically limited study we reported in our major paper.Nonetheless, our answer to the question asked in the title of this response, “Should clinicians’ views of mental illness influence the diagnostic manual?” is a clear and unequivocal yes. In our view, too much of the research literature stimulated by the recent DSMs has primarily used the diagnostic criteria in these DSMs to specify patient samples and then perform various experiments to study the DSM categories. We favor a different approach to research which is consistent with a comment once made by the philosopher of science, Karl Popper: “scientific theories originate from myths, and... a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories” (1963, 39). We believe that clinicians, with their years [End Page 285] of experience dealing with the ambiguities, the emotionality, and the chaos of psychopathology, have formed complex conceptual systems to try to understand the mysteries of abnormal behavior. We strongly support increased research attempts that will use clinicians as subjects and that will attempt to understand how clinicians use diagnostic concepts to understand patients.Although research on clinicians has not attracted a large amount of attention in the field, there is a long history of such research studies. For instance, in the 1970s, Overall used multivariate techniques to create graphical maps of how clinicians represented relationships among diagnoses (Overall et al. 1977). Widiger has used a similar strategy in some of his research (Widiger et al. 1987). In the early 1980s, a view of concept formation from cognitive psychology was used by Cantor et al. (1980) to look at psychiatric diagnoses as representing prototypes. Horowitz and colleagues extended this research. Blashfield and his colleagues had a grant to use the prototype model to study personality disorders and performed research investigating both case histories (Blashfield et al. 1985) and analyses of diagnostic criteria (Blashfield and Breen 1989; Davis, Blashfield, and McElroy 1993). Westen and colleagues have attempted to reconceptualize DSM personality disorder categories using the prototype model (Westen and Shedler 1999). Ahn and her colleagues (Ahn et al. 2006; Kim and Ahn 2002) have taken more recent applications of ideas from cognitive psychology to study how clinicians use and understand diagnostic categories. Finally, Flanagan and colleagues (Flanagan and Blashfield 2006; Flanagan, Keeley, and Blashfield, in press; Flanagan, Miller, and Davidson, submitted) have used qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques to try to understand the diagnostic concepts held by experienced clinicians.Besides empirical studies of how clinicians use diagnostic concepts, we also support the increased interest in... (shrink)

This article examines the role of time as a methodological tool and pathological focus of clinical psychiatry and psychology in the first half of the 20th century. Contextualizing ‘psychopathologies of time’ developed by practitioners in Europe and North America with reference to the temporal theories implicit in Freudian psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson’s philosophy of durée, it illuminates how depression, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive behaviours and aphasia were understood to be symptomatic of an altered or disturbed (...) ‘time-sense’. Drawing upon a model of temporal synthesis whereby in healthy individuals, a subjective temporal sense ( Ichzeit, durée, or personal lifetime) was perceived and understood in relation to objective time frameworks ( Weltzeit, clock-time, or quantitative time models like historical chronology), clinicians argued that mentally ill patients were unable to synthesize Ichzeit and Weltzeit, using variations in this disturbance to define specific pathological conditions. (shrink)

Since psychiatry remains a descriptive discipline, it is essential for its practitioners to understand how the language of psychiatry came to be formed. This important book, written by a psychiatrist-historian, traces the genesis of the descriptive categories of psychopathology and examines their interaction with the psychological and philosophical context within which they arose. The author explores particularly the language and ideas that have characterised descriptive psychopathology from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. He presents a masterful survey of the (...) history of the main psychiatric symptoms, from the metaphysics of classical antiquity to the operational criteria of today. Tracing the evolution of concepts such as memory, consciousness, will and personality, and of symptoms ranging from catalepsy and aboulia to anxiety and self-harm, this book provides fascinating insights into the subjective nature of mental illness, and into the ideas of British, Continental and American authorities who sought to clarify and define it. (shrink)

This chapter explores Michel Foucault's contribution to a critical assessment of modern and contemporary psychiatric practice. It focuses firstly on the History of Madness : the social, political, cultural, epistemological construction of the object "psychiatric patient" and "psychiatric pathology"; the gradual historical shift from "madness" to "psychiatric pathology" and its social and epistemological consequences; the horizons and limits of the romantic task Foucault assumes on this basis ; the critique Jacques Derrida formulated about this project, and particularly about Foucault's (...) reading of Descartes. Secondly, it examines Foucault's course on Psychiatric Power, focusing on the sociopolitical consequences of this medicalization process: i.e., the construction of the object "psychiatric patient" as "disciplinated bodies", and the general context of this anthropological metamorphosis Foucault studied in his books Discipline and Punish, The Will to Knowledge, and in his course Naissance de la biopolitique. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite five decades of increasingly elegant studies aimed at advancing the pathophysiology and treatment of mental illness, the results have not met expectations. Diagnoses are still based on observation, the clinical history, and an outmoded diagnostic system that stresses the historic goal of disease specificity. Psychotropic drugs are still based on molecular targets developed decades ago, with no increase in efficacy. Numerous biomarkers have been proposed, but none have the requisite degree of sensitivity and specificity, and therefore (...) have no usefulness in the clinic. The obvious lack of progress in psychiatry needs exploration.MethodsThe historical goals of psychiatry are reviewed, including parity with medicine, a focus on diagnostic reliability rather than validity, and an emphasis on reductionism at the expense of socioeconomic issues. Data are used from Thomas Picketty and others to argue that our failure to advance clinical care may rest in part on the rise in social and economic inequality that began in the 1970s, and in part on our inability to move beyond the medical model of specificity of disease and treatment.ResultsIt is demonstrated herein that the historical goal of specificity of disease and treatment has not only impeded the advance of diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, but, in combination with a rapid increase in socioeconomic inequality, has led to poorer outcomes and rising mortality rates in a number of disorders, including schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression.ConclusionsIt is proposed that Psychiatry should recognize the fact of socioeconomic inequality and its effects on mental disorders. The medical model, with its emphasis on diagnostic and treatment specificity, may not be appropriate for investigation of the brain, given its complexity. The rise of scientific inequality, with billions allocated to connectomics and genetics, may shift attention away from the need for improvements in clinical care. Unfortunately, the future prospects of those suffering from mental illness appear dim. (shrink)

While research has consistently found that general distress and psychopathology are not predictive of sexual recidivism, examination of specific syndromes and their relationship to offending has revealed a potentially more complicated relationship. One proposed mechanism for the mixed findings with respect to major mental illness and sexual offending may be the confound of neurological injury. As identified in Mann et al. work on psychologically meaningful risk factors, mental illness represents an area in need of more study (...) given the indirect influence it may exert on risk. To this end, the current paper summarizes the study of the relationship between neurological injury, psychosis and problematic sexual behavior among two Canadian samples of forensic and civil psychiatric patients. In the first study we observed higher than expected rates of sexually-themed psychotic symptoms and problematic sexual behavior among a combined group of forensic and civil psychiatric patients. Indeed 70 percent of those individuals who engaged in PSB endorsed sexually-themed psychotic symptoms. While comorbidity is common amongst this group, brain injury appeared to represent a specific liability. Compared to those who did not engage in PSB, those who did were almost 4x more likely to have a documented history of brain injury. In the second study we sought to replicate this finding in a larger forensic sample of 1,240. However, the recorded rates of brain injury were significantly less, such that no relationship to PSB was observed. Based on the mixed findings to date, including our own data, questions remain about the nature of a potential shared vulnerability for psychosis and PSB previously postulated. Among psychiatrically complex individuals who engage in PSB, understanding etiology and links to risk are helpful, but perhaps more importantly is attention to the mechanisms through which symptoms confer risk and how best to treat and manage them. (shrink)

The history of physician involvement in capital proceedings is longstanding and ripe with controversy and conflicts of ethical concerns. Previously one of us has written that the controversy is more appropriately characterized as a conflict of moral position rather than one of ethical dilemma.In hindsight, we believe that analysis, while true, does not capture the depth or complexity of the issue.Forensic psychiatric evaluations, including competency to be executed evaluations, are done with a clear understanding that no physician-patient relationship exists. (...) Treatment, however, is not so neatly re-categorized in large measure because it involves the physician’s active provision of the healing arts. (shrink)

The concept of citizenship is becoming more and more prominent in specific fields, such as psychiatry/mental health, where it is constituted as a solution to the issues of exclusion, discrimination, and poverty often endured by the mentally ill. We argue that such discourse of citizenship represents a break in the history of psychiatry and constitutes a powerful strategy to counter the effects of equally powerful psychiatric labelling. However, we call into question the emancipatory promise of a citizenship agenda. (...) Foucault's concept of governmentality is helpful in understanding the production of the citizen subject, its location within the 'art of government', as well as the ethical and political implications of citizenship in the context of mental health. (shrink)

Scant consideration has been given to the ethical implications of the policy of closing down psychiatric hospitals in favour of community care. The recent adherents of this policy in government have been enthusiastic in encouraging its implementation. This paper has three sections: a brief resumé of the history and principles of community care for the mentally ill; a discussion on the merits and de-merits of psychiatric care in the hospital and in the community; and an outline of some preliminary (...) categories for ethical analysis. (shrink)

On June 16, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that forced administration of antipsychotic drugs to a defendant facing serious criminal charges is appropriate in order to render that defendant competent to stand trial, but only in limited circumstances. The treatment must be medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the fairness of the trial, and necessary to significantly further important government interests, after taking account of less-intrusive alternatives.Charles Sell, a former dentist, had a long history (...) of mental illness. He had been hospitalized twice, in 1982 and 1984, after expressing paranoid ideas to law enforcement officials. In May 1997, Sell was charged with fifty-six counts of mail fraud, six counts of Medicaid fraud, and one count of money laundering. He was released on bail after a magistrate determined that he was currently competent to stand trial. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) represents a promising new frontier in medicine and neuroscience for managing disorders of mental health that represent an enormous burden of disease on our societies. The caution and significant restraint of leaders in the evolution of DBS today stand in sharp and refreshing contrast to previous episodes in history. In embracing the anticipatory and pragmatic problem-solving approach of neuroethics to clinical neuroscience, four significant paradoxes for DBS today come to the fore: caution and innovation, (...) capacity and allocation of resources, notions of wellness and disease, and the high-stakes/high-benefit imperative of communicating about science. Tackling these paradoxes is the focus of this article. (shrink)

In this essay, the author describes how he faced institutionalized homophobia during his psychiatric training, and how he later wrote a play inspired by the life of a gay psychiatrist. Despite Freud’s supportive stance, homosexuality aroused the antipathy of American organized psychiatry and psychoanalysis and came to be listed as an illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Dr. John E. Fryer outed himself as “Dr. H Anonymous” at a 1972 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, and the next (...) year homosexuality was removed from the DSM. The 2014 play Doctor Anonymous offers a fictionalized account of this watershed moment in the history of the gay rights movement. The author discusses his own psychotherapeutic work with gay male patients, including those who had previously been treated with conversion therapy, and explores how the play mirrors his own life experience and the experience of his patients. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive study of the views of ancient philosophers on mental disorders. Relying on the original Greek and Latin textual sources, the author describes and analyses how the ancient philosophers explained mental illness and its symptoms, including hallucinations, delusions, strange fears and inappropriate moods and how they accounted for the respective roles of body and mind in such disorders. Also considered are ethical questions relating to mental illness, approaches to treatment and the (...) position of mentally ill people in societies of the times. The volume opens with a historical overview that examines ancient medical accounts of mental illness, from Hippocrates' famous Sacred Disease to late antiquity medical authors. Separate chapters interpret in detail the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Galen and the Stoics and a final chapter summarises the views of various strains of Scepticism, the Epicurean school and the Middle and Neo-Platonists. Offering an important and useful contribution to the study of ancient philosophy, psychology and medicine. This volume sheds new light on the history of mental illness and presents a new angle on ancient philosophical psychology. (shrink)

Background Medical aid in dying (MAID) is legal in a number of countries, including some states in the U.S. While MAID is only permitted for terminal illnesses in the U.S., some other countries allow it for persons with psychiatric illness. Psychiatric MAID, however, raises unique ethical concerns, especially related to its effects on mental illness stigma and on how persons with psychiatric illnesses would come to feel about treatment and suicide. To explore those concerns, we conducted several (...) focus groups with persons with lived experience of mental illness.Methods We conducted three video-conference-based focus groups involving adults residing in the U.S. who reported a prior diagnosis of any psychiatric illness. Only participants who reported thinking that MAID for terminal illness was morally acceptable were included. Focus group participants were asked to respond to a series of four questions. Groups were facilitated by a coordinator who was independent of the research team.Results A total of 22 persons participated in the focus groups. The majority of participants had depression and anxiety disorders; no participants had psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Many participants strongly favored permitting psychiatric MAID, generally on the basis of respect for autonomy, its effects on stigma, and the severe suffering caused by mental illness. Others expressed concerns, typically related to difficulties in ensuring decision-making capacity and to the risk that MAID would be used in lieu of suicide.Conclusions Persons with a history of psychiatric illness, as a group, have a diverse array of views about the permissibility of psychiatric MAID, reflecting nuanced consideration of how it relates to the public perception of mental illness, stigma, autonomy, and suicide risk. (shrink)

What counts as health or ill health? How do we deal with the fallibility of our own bodies? Should illness and disease be considered simply in biological terms, or should considerations of its emotional impact dictate our treatment of it? Our understanding of health and illness had become increasingly more complex in the modern world, as we are able to use medicine not only to fight disease but to control other aspects of our bodies, whether mood, blood pressure, (...) or cholesterol. This collection of essays foregrounds the concepts of health and illness and patient experience within the philosophy of medicine, reflecting on the relationship between the ill person and society. Mental illness is considered alongside physical disease, and the important ramifications of society's differentiation between the two are brought to light. Health, Illness and Disease is a significant contribution to shaping the parameters of the evolving field of philosophy of medicine and will be of interest to medical practitioners and policy-makers as well as philosophers of science and ethicists. (shrink)

I argue in this essay that the phenomena we classify as "mental illness" result largely from the refusal of socially authorized "experts" to recognize - and thus to constitute - the Other as a subject. I suggest that Institutional Mental Health refuses to do this not merely because it seeks to aggrandize its own power but also because it fears to acknowledge that we are all participants in a process of historical development. It denies this because it (...) is historically conditioned by its own moment of origin in the project of the Enlightenment, It is conseqently wed to an ethos of rationalized order that does not accomodate, much less support, the unpredictable creative power of the Other and that sustains instead the project of mastery, of domination, of disovering eternal laws that will enable Reason to master history and to master the Other. For this reason Institutional Mental Health and its diverse ideologies, ranging from the pyschoanalytic to genetic defect models, constitute a major obstacle to the evolution of humanity. (shrink)

This dissertation examines psychiatry from a philosophy of science perspective, focusing on issues of realism and classification. Questions addressed in the dissertation include: What evidence is there for the reality of mental disorders? Are any mental disorders natural kinds? When are disease explanations of abnormality warranted? How should mental disorders be classified? -/- In addressing issues concerning the reality of mental disorders, I draw on the accounts of realism defended by Ian Hacking and William Wimsatt, arguing (...) that biological research on mental disorders supports the inference that some mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders) are real theoretical entities, and that the evidence supporting this inference is causal and abductive. In explicating the nature of such entities, I argue that real mental disorders are natural kinds insofar as they are natural classes of abnormal behavior whose members share the same causal structure. I present this position in terms of Richard Boyd’s homeostatic cluster property theory of natural kinds, and argue that this perspective reveals limitations of Hacking’s account on the looping effects of human kinds, which suggests that the objects classified by psychiatrists are unstable entities. I subsequently argue that a subset of mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and Down syndrome) are mental illnesses insofar as they are disorders caused by a dysfunctional biological process that leads to harmful consequences for individuals. I present this analysis against Thomas Szasz’s argument that mental illness is a myth. -/- In addressing issues of psychiatric classification, my analysis focuses on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which has been published regularly by the American Psychiatric Association since 1952, and is currently in its fourth edition. After examining the history of DSM in the twentieth century, and in particular, DSM’s shift to an atheoretical and purely descriptive system in the 1980s, I consider the relative merits of descriptive versus causal systems of classification. Drawing on Carl Hempel’s analysis of taxonomic systems in psychiatry, I argue that a causal classification system would provide a superior approach to psychiatric classification than the descriptive system currently favored by DSM. (shrink)

SWORD W, CLARK AM, HEGADOREN K, BROOKS S and KINGSTON D. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 51–62 The complexity of postpartum mental health and illness: a critical realist studyPostpartum depression (PPD) is a major public health issue that profoundly impacts the woman, her infant and family. Although it may be linked to hormone changes, no direct hormonal aetiology has been established. A large body of evidence implicates numerous psychosocial predictors of PPD. While a history of depression predicts about (...) 50% of cases of PPD, it remains unclear why some women with a history do not develop depression following childbirth, even taking psychosocial factors into account. The aim of this study was to identify the main mechanisms and factors associated with the presence or absence of PPD in women with a history of depression, and the presence of PPD in women without a history, using a critical realist approach. The findings indicate a number of personal and contextual factors that influence postpartum mental health and illness. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, women who did not develop depression identified goal‐oriented actions that were protective. These factors and processes did not exist in isolation and the interplay among them in influencing health was apparent. More research is needed to explore the effects of these mechanisms in different contexts. (shrink)

The concept 'health' is ambiguous [18,9, 11]. The concept 'mental health' is even more so. 'Health' compasses senses of well-being, wholeness, and sound ness that mean more than the simple freedom from illness - a fact appreci ated in the World Health Organization's definition of health as more than the absence of disease or infirmity [7]. The wide range of viewpoints of the con tributors to this volume attests to the scope of issues placed under the rubric ' (...) class='Hi'>mental health. ' These papers, presented at the Fourth Symposium on Philos ophy and Medicine, were written and discussed within a broad context of interests concerning mental health. Moreover, in their diversity these papers point to the many descriptive, evaluative, and, in fact, performative functions of statements concerning mental health. Before introducing the substance of these papers in any detail, I want to indicate the profound commerce between philosophical and psychological ideas in theories of mental health and disease. This will be done in part by a consideration of some conceptual developments in the history of psychiatry, as well as through an analysis of some of the functions of the notions of mental illness and health. 'Mental health' lays a special stress on the wholeness of human intuition, emotion, thought, and action. (shrink)

Oral history makes a critical contribution in articulating the perspectives of people often overlooked in histories written from the standpoint of dominating class, gender, ethnic or professional groups. Using three interrelated approaches — life stories, oral history, and narrative analysis — this paper analyzes family responses to psychiatric care and mental illness in oral history interviews with family members who experienced mental illness themselves or within their family between 1930 and 1975. Interviews with (...) three family members in Alberta, Canada are the primary focus. These stories provide an important avenue to understand the meaning and transformations of mental health‐care from the point of view of families. Family members’ stories reveal contradictory responses to the dominant cultural discourse. Using a performative framework of interpretation, the narratives reveal a complex interplay between medical, social and cultural conceptions of mental illness, deepening our understanding of its meaning. The history of mental health‐care can be substantially enriched by the analysis of family members’ stories, not only revealing the constructed nature of mental illness, but also illustrating the family as a mediating context in which the meaning of mental illness is negotiated. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. The article demonstrates the development and influence of the main diagnostic systems in psychiatry, such as the DSM and the ICD, on the concept of psychiatric diseases. The problem of classification of psychiatric disorders is one of the main topics that is the field of study of the philosophy of psychiatry. The correct diagnosis within a particular diagnostic system directly affects the choice of appropriate drug treatment, psychotherapy and social support (...) for people suffering from mental disorders. Misdiagnosis has not only negative medical but also social consequences, leading to stigmatization and avoidance of people suffering from mental disorders. M e t h o d s. The research uses an integrated approach to the analysis of psychiatric diagnostic systems, including historical, comparative and interdisciplinary methods. The application of the historical method contributed to a detailed study of the evolution of psychiatric diagnostic systems and changes in approaches to the classification of mental disorders. A comparative analysis of the main diagnostic systems was carried out, considering their structure, diagnostic criteria and interaction. The interdisciplinary method involves the integration of knowledge from psychiatry, philosophy, medical history, cultural studies, and psychology, providing a deep understanding of the medical, philosophical, social, and cultural aspects of mental disorders. R e s u l t s. The article analyzes the historical development of ideas and methodology for the classification of mental disorders from ancient Greece to the present. From Hippocrates and Plato to Sydenham, Kabanis, Pinel, and Eskierol, the authors trace the evolution of understanding of mental disorders, emphasizing the shift in emphasis from etiological theories to more descriptive and categorical models. The authors describe the current state of the DSM and ICD classification systems, which play a dominant role in psychiatric science and subsequent social support and welfare for people suffering from mental disorders. Changes that have occurred in these systems and their impact on psychiatric practice and research are discussed. Considerable emphasis is placed on the history of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which becomes a symbolic indicator of the complexities and challenges associated with the modern classification of mental illness. The authors consider the phenomenological method as a tool for a deeper understanding of PTSD, especially in the context of the constant psychotraumatic factors of war, the consequences of which generate new challenges for Ukrainian psychiatric practice. The authors present a case study using the phenomenological approach to diagnose PTSD, which demonstrates the need for a detailed analysis of patients' internal experience for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment. C o n c l u s i o n s. The conclusions emphasize the importance of integrating philosophical methods into the diagnosis and analysis of mental illness in clinical practice. The authors call for the development of interdisciplinary research involving both philosophers and mental health professionals to develop more detailed and person-centered approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. (shrink)

Throughout its history, the insanity defense specifically and the more general concept of mental defect or incompetence have been grounded in the assumption that those people fit for the rule of law are able to give and to comprehend reasons for their actions. This chapter traces the evolution of perspectives on the nature of mental illness and the manner in which cultural and extra-scientific influences have shaped perspectives. These perspectives are most saliently expressed in statutory provisions (...) and relevant case law summarized here and covering historical developments from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. Significant interactions between law and psychiatry are further highlighted and informed by core and controversial philosophical assumptions. Attention is given to differences between juridical and medical conceptions of responsibility. (shrink)

Serious mental illness (SMI) has long posed a dilemma to society. The use of community treatment orders (CTOs), a legal means by which to deliver mandated psychiatric treatment to individuals while they live in the community, is a contemporary technique for managing SMI. CTOs (or a similar legal mechanism) are used in every province in Canada and in many jurisdictions around the world in the care and management of clients with severe and persistent mental illness (most (...) frequently schizophrenia) who have a history of treatment non‐compliance and subsequent relapse. Although there is ongoing controversy around CTOs, their use continues to be on the rise. René Girard's mimetic theory, in which he posits the social utility of the scapegoat mechanism, may shed some light on how established cultural patterns contribute to contemporary responses to SMI: how culture depends on the reproduction of certain narratives, and how these act to shape the identity of those involved. The CTO specifically can be seen to act as a scapegoating mechanism, wherein, by singling out and controlling individuals who appear to threaten social order, social order is restored. This paper reviews Girard's theory, looks at how it has been applied to SMI, and then considers how it may illuminate the social role of the CTO. This examination may provide mental health nurses with insight into the constructed identities of their patients, as well as the role of mental health care within broader cultural narratives. (shrink)

The article provides historical and philosophical reconstruction of the emergence and development of the philosophy of psychiatry. The main cases of interaction between philosophy and psychiatry in the context of the development of the history of philosophical thought from antiquity to the present are demonstrated. The key points of interaction between philosophy and psychiatry from Antiquity to the middle of the twentieth century are revealed. The phenomenon of existential-phenomenological psychiatry is described as one of the first attempts of thorough (...) interaction between psychiatry and philosophy. Its main task is defined – to describe the experience of mental illness. Which is an important and necessary task to raise awareness of the impact of mental disorders on people's lives, attempts to reduce stigma. Describing this type of experience creates a unique window into understanding a person with a mental disorder, and illustrates the common and distinctive features of the experience of people with different psychiatric nosologies. These studies provide a deeper understanding of how mental pathology impoverishes a person's relationship with themselves and their community, with the subsequent use of the findings and humanization of psychiatric practice. The prerequisites for the emergence of modern philosophy of psychiatry, in particular the cognitive revolution, the development of philosophy of science, the development of analytical and continental philosophy, in particular phenomenology, existential philosophy, hermeneutics, are determined. The main directions of research in the philosophy of psychiatry are determined. Which are aimed at clarifying the meaning of terms related to mental illness and describing the phenomenon of mental illness itself, analyzing and clarifying those definitions that are directly used in clinical practice and the basis of psychiatric knowledge, as such, to highlight the prerequisites behind certain theoretical positions of psychiatry, to describe the nature of mental illness. (shrink)

_Choice Recommended Read_ _What Psychiatry Left Out of the DSM-5: Historical Mental Disorders Today_ covers the diagnoses that the _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_ failed to include, along with diagnoses that should not have been included, but were. Psychiatry as a field is over two centuries old and over that time has gathered great wisdom about mental illnesses. Today, much of that knowledge has been ignored and we have diagnoses such as "schizophrenia" and "bipolar disorder" (...) that do not correspond to the diseases found in nature; we have also left out disease labels that on a historical basis may be real. Edward Shorter proposes a history-driven alternative to the DSM. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century natural history was widely regarded as a rational and ‘distracting’ pursuit that countered the ill-effects, physical and mental, of urban life. This familiar argument was not only made by members of naturalists’ societies but was also borrowed and adapted by alienists concerned with the moral treatment of the insane. This paper examines the work of five long-serving superintendents in Victorian Scotland and uncovers the connections made between an interest in natural history and the (...) management of mental disease. In addition to recovering a significant influence on the conduct of several alienists the paper explores arguments made outside the asylum walls in favour of natural history as an aid to mental health. Investigating the promotion of natural history as a therapeutic recreation in Scotland and elsewhere reveals more fully the moral and cultural significance attached to natural history pursuits in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Mental disorders are often thought to be harmful dysfunctions. Jerome Wakefield has argued that such dysfunctions should be understood as failures of naturally selected functions. This suggests, implicitly, that evolutionary biology and other Darwinian disciplines hold important information for anyone working on answering the philosophical question, 'what is a mental disorder?'. In this article, the author argues that Darwinian theory is not only relevant to the understanding of the disrupted functions, but it also sheds light on the disruption (...) itself, as well as on the harm that attends the disruption. The arguments advanced here are partially based on the view that a core feature of Darwinism is that it stresses the environmental relativity of functions and dysfunctions. These arguments show a very close empirical connection between social judgments and dysfunctions, which is of interest for psychiatric theory. Philosophically, they lead to the conclusion that the concept of mental disorder is identical to the concept of mental dysfunction. Consequently, it is both misleading and redundant to conceptualize mental disorders as 'harmful dysfunctions', and not simply as 'mental dysfunctions'. (shrink)

Is mental illness an object of knowledge? The history of psychiatry teaches us to doubt it, by emphasizing the infinitely variable and fluctuating character of psychiatric entities. Mental illness is not simply ‘out there’, waiting to be described and theorized by psychiatrists; it interacts with psychiatric theories, clinical entities waxing and waning in accordance with diagnostic fashions, institutional practices and methods of treatment. This should be a warning to psychiatrists and therapists: their intervention is part (...) of the ‘etiological equation’ of the syndromes that they claim to observe from the outside. But this should also be a warning to historians of psychiatry, who can no longer be content with writing the history of ready-made syndromes and psychiatric theories. They must, if they want to remain faithful to their improbable ‘object’, study the complex interactions from which those syndromes and those theories emerge, somewhere between the doctors, the patients and the society that surrounds them. In short, they must study the making of psychiatric history, and understand that they participate in it. (shrink)

Experiences of “hearing voices” nowadays usually count as verbal hallucinations and they indicate serious mental illness. Some are first rank symptoms of schizophrenia, and the mass media, at least in Britain, tend to present them as antecedents of impulsive violence. They are, however, also found in other psychiatric conditions and epidemiological surveys reveal that even individuals with no need of psychiatric help can hear voices, sometimes following bereavement or abuse, but sometimes for no discernible reason. So do these (...) experiences necessarily mean insanity and violence, and must they be thought of as pathogenic hallucinations; or are there other ways to understand them and live with them, and with what consequences? One way to make our thinking more flexible is to turn to history. We find that hearing voices was always an enigmatic experience, and the people who had it were rare. The gallery of voice hearers is, though, distinguished and it includes Galilei, Bunyan and St Teresa. Socrates heard a daemon who guided his actions, but in his time this did not signify madness, nor was it described as a hallucination. Yet in 19th century French psychological medicine the daemon became a hallucination and Socrates was retrospectively diagnosed as mentally ill. This paper examines the controversies which surrounded the experience at different points in history as well as the practice of retrospective psychiatry. The conclusion reached on the basis of the historical materials is that the experience and the ontological status it is ascribed are not trans-cultural or trans-historic but situated both in history and in the contemporary conflicts. (shrink)

Although physicians have attempted for centuries to uncover the biological differences between men and women with regard to mental illness, they continue to face the challenges of untangling biological factors from social and cultural ones. This article uses examples from history to illustrate three common problems in trying to establish biological differences: identifying factors as sex-based when they are really gender-based; overlooking changes in masculine and feminine roles over time; and placing too great an emphasis on hormones. (...) By using the benefit of hindsight to identify problems from the past, we can think more critically about these issues in the present and the future. (shrink)

This study aimed to examine the meanings that nurses attached to the ‘treatments’ administered to cure ‘sexual deviation’ (SD) in theUK, 1935–1974. In theUK, homosexuality was considered a classifiable mental illness that could be ‘cured’ until 1992. Nurses were involved in administering painful and distressing treatments. The study is based on oral history interviews with fifteen nurses who had administered treatments to cure individuals of theirSD. The interviews were transcribed for historical interpretation. Some nurses believed that their (...) role was to passively follow any orders they had been given. Other nurses limited their culpability concerning administering these treatments by adopting dehumanising and objectifying language and by focussing on administrative tasks, rather than the human beings in need of their care. Meanwhile, some nurses genuinely believed that they were acting beneficently by administering these distinctly unpleasant treatments. It is envisaged that this study might act to reiterate the need for nurses to ensure their interventions have a sound evidence base and that they constantly reflect on the moral and value base of their practice and the influence that science and societal norms can have on changing views of what is considered ‘acceptable practice’. (shrink)