HI,
The New York Times has two recent articles about mental illness.
The first one is short -- about discussions going on among psychiatrists as they revise the DSM.
The second is longer and about how the West has spread its version of mental illness around the world.
Revising Book on Disorders of the Mind
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/he...0psych.html?hp
Quote:
In a conference call on Tuesday, Dr. Regier, Dr. Kupfer and several other members of the task force outlined their favored revisions. The task force favored making semantic changes that some psychiatrists have long argued for, trading the term “mental retardation” for “intellectual disability,” for instance, and “substance abuse” for “addiction.”
One of the most controversial proposals was to identify “risk syndromes,” that is, a risk of developing a disorder like schizophrenia or dementia. Studies of teenagers identified as at high risk of developing psychosis, for instance, find that 70 percent or more in fact do not come down with the disorder.
“I completely understand the idea of trying to catch something early,” Dr. First said, “but there’s a huge potential that many unusual, semi-deviant, creative kids could fall under this umbrella and carry this label for the rest of their lives.”
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The Americanization of Mental Illness
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/ma...l?pagewanted=4
Quote:
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In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill — doctors or shamans or priests — inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. Because the troubled mind has been influenced by healers of diverse religious and scientific persuasions, the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another.
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Quote:
"The results of the current study suggest that we may actually treat people more harshly when their problem is described in disease terms,” Mehta wrote. “We say we are being kind, but our actions suggest otherwise.” The problem, it appears, is that the biomedical narrative about an illness like schizophrenia carries with it the subtle assumption that a brain made ill through biomedical or genetic abnormalities is more thoroughly broken and permanently abnormal than one made ill though life events.
“Viewing those with mental disorders as diseased sets them apart and may lead to our perceiving them as physically distinct. Biochemical aberrations make them almost a different species.”
In other words, the belief that was assumed to decrease stigma actually increased it. Was the same true outside the lab in the real world?
The question is important because the Western push for “mental-health literacy” has gained ground.
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I'm not sure I understand the second article. 'Will have to go back to it. I have seen articles in the past about how culture influences manifestations and treatment of mental illness. 'Would like to know more.
M.
02-10-2010, 04:26 AM
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NYT on 1) revisions to the DSM and 2) The Americanization of Mental Illness
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