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Chapter 8
Mental
Disorder
Introduction
• About 50% of American adults suffer
from a mental disorder during their
lifetime
• Depression is "the common cold of
mental illness"
• Stigma makes getting help difficult for
many people
Popular Beliefs
• Myths:
– mentally ill individuals are extremely weird
– mental illness is hopeless
– there is a sharp, clear distinction between
"mentally ill" and "mentally healthy"
– mentally ill individuals are crazed, violent
people
– people get more depressed in the winter
Types of Mental Disorder
• Biomedical view of mental illness: mental
illness is similar to a physical disease
– Accepted by American Psychiatric Association
• Psychological view: mental illness
signals emotional problems of
psychological origin
• Psychosis: loss of touch with reality
Types of Mental Disorder
– Manic-depressive disorder (or bipolar
disorder): Fluctuating between 2 opposite
extremes of mood - mania,
• Great elation, exuberance, and excitement), and
depression (overwhelming despair)
– Schizophrenia:
• Characterized by thinking and talking in
unconventional, illogical, or ambiguous ways;
– Hallucinations (hearing and/or seeing things that do not
exist)
Types of Mental Disorder
• Neurosis: less severe than psychosis;
little distortion of reality;
– Ability to behave in normal way;
– Neurotic symptoms prevent the sufferers
from being as happy as they want to be
– Anxiety reaction:
• Generalized apprehension; becomes phobia when
a specific object (or objects) causes anxiety
Types of Mental Disorder
–Obsessive compulsive
disorder:
• Thoughts that interrupt train of
thought; ritualistic action
Types of Mental Disorder
–Depression: feeling of sadness,
dejection, and self-deprecation
–Psychophysiologic disorders:
• Includes hysteria, psychosomatic
illness and conversion reaction
Types of Mental Disorder
• Personality disorder:
– General category of deviant behavior
that cannot be diagnosed as psychotic
or neurotic
– Blatant disregard for society's rules;
thought to be linked to a lack of moral
development –
• Failure to develop a conscience, acquire true
compassion, learn to form meaningful
relationships
Types of Mental Disorder
• The DSM-IV classification: lists over
300 mental disorders; by
symptoms;
–Help practitioners prescribe
appropriate medications
• Criticism of manual:
–Merely descriptive
Types of Mental Disorder
– Arbitrarily defines disorders in terms of a
specific number of symptoms
– Encourages psychiatrists to eliminate
symptoms, not causes
– Promotes biological causes over
environmental problems
– Defines too many ordinary problems as
mental disorders
Social Factors in Mental Disorder
• Many social factors have been studied
as they relate to mental illness:
– class differences
– gender differences
– age
– race and ethnicity
– urban/rural environment
A Global Perspective on Mental
Disorder
• Types of mental illness varies from
culture to culture, e.g.:
– Latin America: people experience a
fear that their souls have left their
bodies
– Malaysia: people suffer from
prolonged screaming and swearing
when startled
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Historically, mentally ill individuals were
treated badly
– Suffering for example, primitive
lobotomies
• Phillippe Pinel: 1793
– Instituted moral treatment of the
mentally ill; development of asylums
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Asylums later became dumping grounds
for persons with mental problems
• Since 1955, new strategies have
emerged
• Mentally ill persons are often viewed by
the general public as:
– Dangerous, dirty, unpredictable,
worthless, and the brunt of jokes
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Courts often put them away in mental
institutions or prisons
– involuntary hospitalization
– incompetent to stand trial
– insanity defense
Societal Responses to Mental Illness
• Mental hospitals are total institutions,
where persons are cut off from:
• The larger society and lead enclosed, regimented
lives that dehumanize patients
• Mental hospitals routinely use tranquilizing
and other drugs to alleviate symptoms
– Rather than eliminate the cause of mental
disorder
• Community mental health centers
Perspectives on Mental Disorder
• Medical model: interprets mental
illness as similar to a physical
disease;
– Identifiable/diagnosable causes; treatment
similar to physical disease
Perspectives on Mental Disorder
• Psychosocial model:
– Psychoanalytic theory: Pioneered by
Freud; resulting from conflicts in
personality
– Social stress theory: Interprets stress as
a major contributor to the development of
mental disorder
• Followers of the labeling model
believe that a mental disorder is not
a sickness
–But only a label imposed upon
some disturbing behaviors