I frankly don’t believe in mental illness. It’s not an illness in the way that diabetes is an illness. I believe that it’s just an emotional response to a distressed environment. I feel that mental illness is often misdiagnosed. My mother was misdiagnosed with a mental illness and institutionalized because of her suicidal tendencies. I remember going to visit her at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, after a while, I felt like I was also a patients. I eventually got legal help to have my mother removed from that hospital to get the proper care. After seeing her doctor, it was determined that she was suffering from Menopause, the Doctor gave a prescription and within a short time she was back to her old self again.
I was shocked after reading the study, regarding the abusive behavior both physically and verbally and the condition of the ward. The patients were also deprived of their legal rights and the right to privacy.
I learned that it’s very difficult to distinguish the sane from the insane in a psychiatric hospital. You could very easily be misdiagnosed as a person with a mental illness, without any further evaluations being done. I personally witnessed the sense of powerlessness, and depersonalized that my mother experienced while she was at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital.
The biggest pitfall in labeling psychiatric patients is that it could create a barrier to what you need to accomplish, either advancement at work, social events, or just the stigma of being a recovering psychiatric survivor.
There is some non-drug, non-harmful medical alternatives to psychiatric drugs. Doctors don’t always inform the patients of these non-drug treatments.
References:
David Rosenhan (1972) ROSENHAN EXPERIMENT - On being sane in insane places http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXp-ANr8jAQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder
References: David Rosenhan (1972) ROSENHAN EXPERIMENT - On being sane in insane places http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXp-ANr8jAQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
" Mental illnesses like depression are disorders that affect your behavior, mood and the way you think. Depression, anxiety and the bipolar disorder are some of the mental illnesses that people go through on a daily basis. Depression is an mental illness it is classified as a mood disorder that causes continuous feeling of sadness. “…
- 541 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Although the two readings, The Saints and the Roughnecks (Chambliss) and On Being Sane in Insane Places are extremely different, they both have one thing in common: After one has been socially labeled then the person will continue to act as they have been labeled.…
- 489 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Yes, mental illness can be an illness of the struggles of life, but it can also be more, and the acknowledgement of that can make way for healing or at least coping.…
- 501 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
From a potential counselor perspective, I am not sure if there is a positive ethical value in labeling individuals who deal with mental disorders. In my opinion, when an individual is labeled with a mental disorder, that person will most likely define themselves to that specific disorder(s). Unfortunately, society will also define them in this manner as well and increase the chances of social rejection due to their “label” of mental illness. It would be ideal if society could focus on a person’s virtues, abilities, and strengths, rather than the “branding”; which, ultimately leads to discrimination. Even when a person has overcome their struggling…
- 168 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
Shyanne, I completely agree with your statement that diagnosing someone with a mental illness is beneficial to the person because it can make them self-aware of themselves. For example, some people with General Anxiety Disorder believe that they are losing their minds. However when they are diagnosed with the disorder they7can seek the proper treatment to overcome their anxiety. In addition, if they are self-aware of their disorder, they can disregard the comments people say about them and thus not full a self-fulfilling…
- 84 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
While I was searching online about the insane, I found this book called Gracefully Insane was pretty interesting, I could not read it because I didn’t have access to the book, but I read about it and it was about how they have the mental hospital and they don’t have There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But still, in the mental hospital is the most luxurious place you could find out. I have only seen the mental hospitals on line while some news comes up or on movies. In the movies they show them that they are all white and they don’t have anything inside them, the only thing that they have is a bed but the bed is attached to the floor. Another thing that I would see in the movies is that they don’t have windows. Maybe the reason…
- 243 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
Also, the value of diagnostic labeling can be used effectively, and ineffectively. The value of diagnostic labeling is classifying patients for identifying disorders that suggest appropriate treatments, and help patients to understand symptoms. However, there is a problem with labeling diagnosis. Labels create therapist and social expectations about client, which can be led them perform self-fulfilling prophecy. Any unusual behavior would be attributed as to disorder. Also, labels make it easier to access stereotypes about client. Then client actually may ¡°become¡± the disorder. For instance, Rosenhan¡¯s study in 1973, he and a number of associates sought admission to a number of mental hospitals. All claimed that they had been hearing voices. All were admitted to the institutions as suffering from schizophrenia. At that time, ceased reporting any unusual symptoms and behaved as they usually did. However, none of the doctors, nor nurses recognized that they are not real patients, but only real…
- 617 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
story in a memoir titled Madness: A Bipolar Life, in an attempt to shed some light and insight on the…
- 1750 Words
- 7 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Mental illness is difficult to understand because there are no physical effects and as a result theories have being written that it is a social construction. There are different types of mental illness which include eating disorders, depression, dementia and Schizophrenia. This has lead to social injustice whereby mentally ill people are discriminated.…
- 885 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
The field of Mental Health has been an evolving process ever since its infancy. In the early stages of Mental Health, individuals who were deemed appropriate for mental health counseling were being labeled as "ill" and in need of serious and immediate treatment. While on the other hand, individuals who were not deemed appropriate for Mental Health were being considered leading a healthy and normal life (Smith & Robinson, 2011). The field of Mental Health can be traced back all the way to Paris, France. The founding father, Philippe Pinel had a firm foundation to humanize individuals in mental institutes by trying to get them to display a sense of being normal. During the late 1800 's, a traditionalist approach started to become increasingly popular where mental clients were being housed instead of focusing on the overall wellness and care of the patient. A little later on in the early 1900 's, a…
- 1119 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Evaluation and treatment of the mentally ill population has developed from confinement of the mad during colonial times, into the biomedical balancing of neurological impairment seen in these modern times. There were eras of mental health reform, medicalization, and deinstitutionalization sandwiched in between (Nies & McEwen, 2011). Regardless of the stage of understanding and development, communities have not been completely successful in dealing with and treating persons who are mentally unwell. Fortunately, treatment has become more compassionate; social and professional attitudes have morphed into more humanistic and neuro-scientific approaches. Throughout the history of mental health management, the cause for most mental illnesses is still not well understood.…
- 1273 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
Everyone once in their life has either thought as themselves or another as crazy. In today’s day and age people find it fun to be called crazy, that was not the case in the past. People in our past who were demined “Insane” were sent away, hidden from society’s eyes and subjected to cruelty and unnecessary torture. America’s health system has changed dramatically for the good and also it recent cases for the bad for some people.…
- 1997 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
The understanding of mental illness today since the early 1900s has changed significantly. In the 1900s, people still had no real understanding of what caused mental illnesses, let alone how to treat the disease. The disease was feared and was seen as incurable. Mentally ill patients would be sent to asylums, and as a form of treatment they were tortured. Until in the later 1900s, it was discovered that certain factors and drug therapy could be a treatment to cure the mentally ill. Today there are various forms of treatment and treatment settings for the different mental illnesses that help to benefit the patients’ condition.…
- 744 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Holden Caulfield is an insane person in a sane world. What is insanity? Insanity is when you’re in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior or social interaction. This state is mental illness. Insanity is when you do things in deranged or outrageous ways that could frighten people, or make people feel uncomfortable when around you. It’s when you do things out of the ordinary; yet feel as if they are ordinary. Insanity could come about when you’re depressed, or after a traumatic event, and sometimes even by keeping all your feelings bottled up inside of yourself. Sane people are sensible, reliable, well-adjusted and practice sound judgment. It’s behavior that is expected in a society. By these definitions Holden Caulfield is an insane person in a sane world due to his inability to deal with the real world, his obsession with irrelevant details, and his overly judgmental and critical nature. Holden Caulfield is from the book The Catcher and the Rye. By J.D Salinger. Holden Caulfield is the protagonist in the novel and the narrator of the novel.…
- 1444 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
It is upsetting to know that many people go through the same circumstances of not being stigmatize and not receiving adequate services. This only reflects that we need to be better educated especially medical staff that will be constantly have contact with people with mental illness. If doctors and nurses could understand mental illness better, then instead of stereotyping and labeling there could be earlier interventions for the patients.…
- 69 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays