Mental Illness
[c.1950]
A creation of professional psychiatrists from the mid-nineteenth century onwards to explain rebellious or "anti-social" behaviour, usually called "hysteria" until the 1950s and thought of as a primarily female "disorder". In the last twenty years many people have questioned the legitimacy of the label of mental illness, and have criticized the way that those given the label are treated as second-class human beings.
Green thinkers prefer to take mental health or mental wellness as their starting-point, rather than framing the issue within the conventional and limiting terms of mental illness, disease or handicap. Some humanistic psychologists use the term "mental distress": "Humanistic psychology does not attach very much importance to diagnostic categories, and does not see mental distress as a medical problem" (John Rowan, 1976).
Yet health care professionals, their patients and the public have invested so much in believing that mental illness does exist that a person's mind and body frequently oblige by presenting very convincing symptoms, further confusing the question of whether or not there is such a thing as mental illness.
"The notion of a person "having a mental illness" is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization, namely, that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases. Moreover, the concept of mental illness also undermines the principle of personal responsibility, the ground on which all free political institutions rest. For the individual, the notion of mental illness precludes and inquiring attitude towards his [or her] conflicts which his [or her] symptoms at once conceal and reveal. For a society, it precludes regarding individuals as responsible persons and invites, instead, treating them as irresponsible patients." (Thomas Szasz, 1962).
"We must face the fact that much of what is called "mental illness" by the oppressive society is healthy and at least semi-rational rebellion against conformity, against submission to, or co-operation with, oppression. The "mental health systems" in our present societies are almost entirely instruments of oppression in spite of the good intentions and the basic humanness of the practitioners who act out their roles in the machinery. Mental health oppression is invoked and used to force submission, to enforce conformity, and to imprison and destroy rebels and non-conformists." (Harvey Jackins, 1983).
And of course it is still women who suffer the most, which is not unconnected with the fact that 86% of all US psychiatrists are men: "In the mental health field, as in most other arenas of social life, it is largely men who have the power to define reality - to name the problem....the typical male Expert is likely to construe the statistics that women are psychologically sicker than men. The numbers may be taken as evidence of the problem of female mental illness. But if we look closer, this way of defining the problem is itself part of the problem. For statistics also show that male doctors will diagnose women as neurotic or psychotic twice as frequently as they do men with the same symptoms: Man as Expert simply sees women quite differently than he sees men." (Miriam Greenspan, 1983).
Entry in "A DICTIONARY OF GREEN IDEAS", JOHN BUTTON, 1988.
[c.1950]
A creation of professional psychiatrists from the mid-nineteenth century onwards to explain rebellious or "anti-social" behaviour, usually called "hysteria" until the 1950s and thought of as a primarily female "disorder". In the last twenty years many people have questioned the legitimacy of the label of mental illness, and have criticized the way that those given the label are treated as second-class human beings.
Green thinkers prefer to take mental health or mental wellness as their starting-point, rather than framing the issue within the conventional and limiting terms of mental illness, disease or handicap. Some humanistic psychologists use the term "mental distress": "Humanistic psychology does not attach very much importance to diagnostic categories, and does not see mental distress as a medical problem" (John Rowan, 1976).
Yet health care professionals, their patients and the public have invested so much in believing that mental illness does exist that a person's mind and body frequently oblige by presenting very convincing symptoms, further confusing the question of whether or not there is such a thing as mental illness.
"The notion of a person "having a mental illness" is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization, namely, that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases. Moreover, the concept of mental illness also undermines the principle of personal responsibility, the ground on which all free political institutions rest. For the individual, the notion of mental illness precludes and inquiring attitude towards his [or her] conflicts which his [or her] symptoms at once conceal and reveal. For a society, it precludes regarding individuals as responsible persons and invites, instead, treating them as irresponsible patients." (Thomas Szasz, 1962).
"We must face the fact that much of what is called "mental illness" by the oppressive society is healthy and at least semi-rational rebellion against conformity, against submission to, or co-operation with, oppression. The "mental health systems" in our present societies are almost entirely instruments of oppression in spite of the good intentions and the basic humanness of the practitioners who act out their roles in the machinery. Mental health oppression is invoked and used to force submission, to enforce conformity, and to imprison and destroy rebels and non-conformists." (Harvey Jackins, 1983).
And of course it is still women who suffer the most, which is not unconnected with the fact that 86% of all US psychiatrists are men: "In the mental health field, as in most other arenas of social life, it is largely men who have the power to define reality - to name the problem....the typical male Expert is likely to construe the statistics that women are psychologically sicker than men. The numbers may be taken as evidence of the problem of female mental illness. But if we look closer, this way of defining the problem is itself part of the problem. For statistics also show that male doctors will diagnose women as neurotic or psychotic twice as frequently as they do men with the same symptoms: Man as Expert simply sees women quite differently than he sees men." (Miriam Greenspan, 1983).
Entry in "A DICTIONARY OF GREEN IDEAS", JOHN BUTTON, 1988.
