471E4--Week 14 Questions/Comments--Tuesday

I plan on reviewing the 60 minutes clip about Untreated mental illness an imminent danger? and The Architecture of Control Shaker Dwelling Houses and the Reform Movement in Early-Nineteenth-Century America. - Kasey Moore

The 60 Minute Clip

The 60 minute clip was fascinating. I actually really want to look into the more clips/documentary about prison’s treatment of the mentally ill as mention in the video. Again, this piece just gets my blood boiling and makes me want to cry. I don’t see an easy fix and I know all too well the reality of trying to commit someone. I wish there was some sort of report system available- after so many call ins or something they can take you in. I know my mother is an optometrist and she has had a patient come in claiming that the government had put something in her brain. She asked my mom to look because she didn’t trust hospitals and other doctors kept turning her away. My mother saw nothing, could do nothing because of HIPAA. The woman had no family – what then!? The women has no one to turn to, my mother doesn’t want that responsibility, and she not in imminent danger. - Kasey Moore

The other side of this video is a clear indication that genetics and environmental stress trigger psychotic breaks. My question- how can we help insulate from the environmental triggers? Our society is very education oriented is there a way to pull back from these pressures to help alleviate that stress from young people’s lives? Maybe there needs to be more education on the warning signs of mental breakdowns so college kids, their roommates, and peers can avoid trigger situations (put things into perspectives) or at least catch it before something horrible happens. Maybe awareness of mental illness will help the mentally ill accept their condition. Maybe it’s the stigma that makes so many of the mentally ill untrusting of the people around them. How can we help remove this stigma? –Kasey Moore

This segment coincides nicely with the Earley book. While it should be obvious to everyone right now that the system is broken, I find it troubling that both Earley and the sheriff interviewed in this clip advocate (one explicitly, one implicitly) a return to the institution. Furthermore, when the reporter is looking at CT scans of schizophrenic brains, he asks, "So, this is a disease of the brain, and not of the mind?" Are lots of people asking this kind of meaningless question? --Stef L.

The Architecture of Control This piece reinforced the Kirkbride and Pinell plans which emphasized rule, order, and control as part of a larger movement which the Shakers were a part of. The piece places Shaker homes, prisons, and asylums in the same context on structure and surveillance. My question extents into the argue about imprisoning the mentally ill today; do the mentally ill need strict structure and tough love (if you can call it that) or do they need a place void of stresses, a paradise to escape to. Do they need to be incorporated into society or whisked away to some utopian in which they are closely monitored? –Kasey Moore

I plan on reviewing the Mental Health and Pregnancy section of the womenshealth.gov website and Andrea Lawson's "Mental Illness in Disney Animated Films." --Carly W.

I had always thought that all pregnant women experienced was postpartum depression. I never realized that it was actually broken down into three categories based on the severity of depression. As I read this, I also wondered why young age was one of the factors that could increase your risk of depression while pregnant or after giving birth. Is it because hormone levels are much higher at this time or something? --Carly W.

I feel like people are constantly finding hidden messages and meanings in Disney films, so the fact that stereotypes towards the mentally ill joins the list is not surprising to me. However, I did find it disturbing that children who consistently watch Disney films are more exposed to stereotypes towards the mentally ill than in their everyday lives in the world. It'd be interesting to see what other types of media this can be applied to. --Carly W.

I plan on reviewing the Mental Health and Pregnancy and "Black people three times as likely to be in mental hospital"- Maggie Nunn

Just like Carly, the Mental Health and Pregnancy reading was interesting. I didn't realize the range of mental illness that women could experience after birth. I was surprised by how drastic women's behavior could change immediately after giving birth such as the postpartum psychosis. While doctors can advise women who have pre existing mental illness to not have children, there is no medical way to detect if postpartum depression or psychosis will occur. This seems terrifying to me but also speaks to the very core of why mental illness is still such a mystery.- Maggie

The second article, "Black people three times as likely to be in mental hospital" focused upon mental hospital in England and Wales. The author argued that race plays a huge factor in people being placed into mental hospitals and that racism occurs within mental hospitals. A study found that black inpatients were 50% more likely to be put in seclusion. The reading was interesting and reminded me a lot of Metzl's book. I can't say that the findings were truly astounding though. We have seen countless times that inequalities exist in the mental health system and the overall complexities of the system. It would be naive to think that race was no longer a factor in the mental health system.-Maggie

I plan on looking at the 60 minute clip about untreated mental illness and imminent danger and the spooky abandoned asylum from the weather channel.

Like Kasey, when I watched the 60 minute clip about untreated mental illness, I was very upset. I just do not understand why these people cannot receive help unless they are an imminent danger. For the boy who did the shooting at Virginia Tech, the court ordered him to seek professional help but they never went through with the order. Should that not have been a warning sign that this boy needed help? Why did they just let him go? To me, the issue comes from the fact that how can you know what imminent danger is? Just because someone seems fine one minute, does not mean they will be fine the next. - Morgan Hayes

The spooky abandoned asylum clip looks at the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, GA. This video from the weather channel seems to me to be what we stereotypically think of as asylums. It was very run down and ruined by the weather and the music that was played with the video made it seem even eerier. Even though this was a video showing the effects of weather on a building, the editor of it decided to make it creepy, playing into a fear that people have of mental institutions and mental illness. - Morgan Hayes

I watched the spooky asylum clip and looked at the information causing depression along with pregnancy. I thought that the Weather Channel took an interesting take on how natural elements can damage buildings. Seeing plants naturally growing inside the abandoned hallway was intriguing. It just shows how little care there has been taken since the building closed. It just shows that abandoned buildings are just left until the elements take care of them. Are abandoned mental hospitals creepier than other abandoned buildings because of their connotation or not? ~ Emily Barry

I knew Foucault was odd but the points put out in “Foucault II: on panoptic and carceral society” are overhyped. I especially liked the line supposing, “to maintain order in a democratic and capitalist society, the populace needs to believe that any person could be surveilled at any time.[sic]” I believe the suspicion of surveillance by authority figures has been around a lot longer than the modern capitalist/democratic society. Furthermore, I understand his argument that society has become more of a panoptic machine, under which everyone is seen, catalogued, and judged. But I think this has always been the standard throughout history, a lack of modern database technology notwithstanding. Instead, I think public awareness of the surveillance system is on the rise thanks to technology and it is thus easier to see the panoptic organization Foucault decries. – Scott Campbell

I watched BigThink’s interview with Jonathan Metzl, author the Protest Psychosis. He speaks about mental illness, schizophrenia, and its popular perception. Metzl claims “history is about race,” and then starts talking about mental illness and race dating back to the 1930s. I think by avoiding the entire 19th century and keeping a subjective, narrow focus he comes off as a conspiracy theorist. Also, Metzl answers his own questions while speaking in a roundabout sort of way. For example, why did the diagnosis of women in the early 20th century change from schizophrenia to bi-polar disorder? Like he says, the DSM “sharpens” the definitions of each illness over time. Why did security increase at the mental institution he researched? Because the majority of its newer patients were in fact criminals. I have not changed my negative opinions on his book after watching the interview. –Scott Campbell

I looked at both the "spooky asylum" clip from the Weather Channel and "My trip to the mental ward" clip. The patient video was interesting, and raised questions for me. It was not surprising to see how small and spartan the room was. How did he get the camera onto the ward? He stated that he was only there for 5 days, and is a young, reasonably educated, white male. This is not the most common type of mental patient. If a video had come to us of an old black homeless man during his stay in a mental hospital, would we be outraged at the conditions of the room? Would we be more scared of the patient? SL

I looked at Jerry Cooke’s photos he took in Bedlam 1946. They all truly represented the cold and neglectful treatment that tons of patients received. At the beginning of the semester when Dr. McClurken asked us why we had taken the class, some of us responded with descriptions like creepy and scary. I am sure many people get this picture from horror films. Before taking this class I knew there was some bad treatment among the mentally-ill but I never knew how widespread it was. Also prior to the class I thought pop-culture had been the only thing that affected our view of mental institutions and thought that they correlated mental hospitals and mental illness just to add to the movie’s scare tactics. However, after seeing those pictures I realized that much of our pop-culture has come from and truly been inspired by horrifying pictures such as Cooke’s. –Courtney Collier

I had no idea that postpartum depression had three categories. I also had no idea that you could feel physical pain such as stomach problems, but wouldn’t every woman have stomach problems though? They did just carry something the size of a watermelon around for nine months. The symptom of memory loss also made me confused, what does that have to do with anything? I feel that many women could be falsely diagnosed with postpartum because every little thing they get upset about is blamed on a disease, what if they are just having a bad day? I definitely believe it is a real thing but it is also possible that some women could use that as a way to get more support and attention after they have a baby. – Courtney Collier

After watching the 60 Minute program on mental health I could not help but notice the repeating phrases of undiagnosed and not treated or lack of treatment. The video exemplified the mental health crisis in America today. However, the same themes throughout history keep reappearing as we read with Grob's Mad Among Us. A quick easy answer is never the solution yet no one seems to take the time to discuss the issues of mental illness anymore. What needs to be done to bring more awareness to mental illness besides such violent tragedies that the video brought up? Why have we not changed public law? Has anyone really looked into these tragedies further beyond gun control? What about the control of the mentally ill in the country that can potentially become violent? How do we make our lawmakers change the law? -Jack Hylan

I looked at the "DSM Proposed Changes, Part I" and "What happened to US Mental Health Care after Deinstitutionalization" articles. The first article was written prior to the publication of the DSM-5 and addresses many of the conflicts we have discussed in class thus far. Flaskerud discusses the debate of whether the addition of new mental disorders actually suggests advances in psychology that allows for the identification of new disorders, or if new disorders are the result of people over-diagnosing others. Flaskerud further questions whether the DSM is appropriate for cross-cultural uses. The previous of DSMs demonstrate a bias towards Western culture, which makes classifying disorders in other countries, particularly Eastern ones, difficult. There is also debate as to the accuracy of the DSM's classification system, which while the supporters of the DSM claim is a biopsychosocial model, Flaskerud states that the three models are very "distinct and separate" from each other. Just how reliable future models of the DSM will depend on whether such conflicts are resolved. --Chelsea Chin

The second article I read was a very rosy view of the effects of deinstitutionalization. I suppose that I should look at Pollack's article a little more positively because he does address the benefits of deinstitutionalization, but his lack of information regarding the mentally ill homeless descredits him, in my opinion.He argues that in the grand scheme of deinstitutionalization, the majority of mentally ill Americans led improved lifestyles after leaving their institutions, though those with extreme cases of mental illness did not see as much improvement in their lifestyles.Pollack focuses mostly on the economic motivations for deinstitutionalization and states that while the movement was not as successful as many hoped it would be (despite somewhat elevated expectations), it allowed for the mentally ill to "crank political valves" in their favor. I was not sure what to take away from this article because seemed a little narrow in its scope. Deinstitutionalization was more than just an economic decision, but Pollack did not seem to address that. --Chelsea Chin

I noticed that the jail in the 60 Minutes clip looked much different from the ninth floor of the Miami jail, which I posted as a resource post last week. Does this jail not have a section for the mentally ill? If they are housed with other inmates, how does that impact their experience and possibly their illness versus separate facilities? -Joanna Jourdan

It's interesting that the article on pregnancy and mental health noted that "A woman is at risk for suicide or for harming her baby if she has postpartum psychosis. It's important to tell a doctor right away if you or someone you know is feeling this way." This makes me wonder how the mental health system treats women who are pregnant or mentally ill with an infant differently than others. - Joanna Jourdan