Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Labels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labels. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Why You Should Stop Using the Phrase ‘the Mentally Ill’

By Tanya Basu
New York Magazine
Originally published February 2, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

What’s most surprising is the reaction that counselors have when the phrase “the mentally ill” is used: They’re more likely to believe that those suffering from mental illness should be controlled and isolated from the rest of the community. That's pretty surprising, given that these counselors are perhaps the ones most likely to be aware of the special needs and varying differences in diagnoses of the group.

Counselors also showed the largest differences in how intolerant they were based on the language, which boosted the researchers’ belief that simply changing language is important in not only understanding people who suffer from mental illness but also helping them adjust and cope. “Even counselors who work every day with people who have mental illness can be affected by language,” Granello said in a press release. “They need to be aware of how language might influence their decision-making when they work with clients.”

The entire article is here.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Stigmatized Schizophrenia Gets a Rebrand

By Elizabeth Picciuto
The Daily Beast
Originally published March 26, 2015

Here are two excerpts:

The word “schizophrenia” was coined in the early 20th century, deriving from the Greek word for “split mind.” The term conveyed the idea that people with schizophrenia experienced a splitting of their personality—that they no longer had unified identities.

Considering all the words for mental illness, both those used by medical doctors and those that are cruel slurs used by the general public, it is striking how many of them have connotations of being broken or disorganized: deranged, crazy (which means cracked— itself a derogatory term), unglued, having a screw loose, unhinged, off the wall.

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“The first lesson from the Japanese experience is that a change is possible and that the change may be beneficial for mental health users and their careers, for professionals and researchers alike,” said Lasalvia. “An early effect of renaming schizophrenia, as proven by the Japanese findings, would increase the percentage of patients informed about their diagnosis, prognosis, and available interventions. A name change would facilitate help seeking and service uptake by patients, and would be most beneficial for the provision of psychosocial interventions, since better informed patients generally display a more positive attitude towards care and a more active involvement in their own care programs.”

The entire article is here.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

When Hearing Voices Is a Good Thing

A new study suggests that schizophrenic people in more collectivist societies sometimes think their auditory hallucinations are helpful.

By Olga Khazan
The Atlantic
Originally posted July 23, 2014

Here are two excerpts:

But a new study suggests that the way schizophrenia sufferers experience those voices depends on their cultural context. Surprisingly, schizophrenic people from certain other countries don't hear the same vicious, dark voices that Holt and other Americans do. Some of them, in fact, think their hallucinations are good—and sometimes even magical.

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The Americans tended to described their voices as violent—"like torturing people, to take their eye out with a fork, or cut someone's head and drink their blood, really nasty stuff," according to the study.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

By Paula Span
The New York Time Blog - The New Old Age
Originally published January 24, 2013

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

The entire blog post is here.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Time to concentrate on human factors in mental illness

Sami Timimi consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist
NHS Lincolnshire, Lincoln, UK
BMJ 2011;343:d4377

Drug companies losing interest in psychiatry is great news for psychiatry and mental health services but most of all for patients.1 Other research funding sources may also recognize that a focus on the brain is not a credible, evidence based choice likely to contribute to better care for those who have mental distress. Drug companies have found mental health highly lucrative, with multibillion pound blockbuster drugs such as the misnamed (for marketing purposes) antidepressants and antipsychotics. Sooner or later it would become apparent that the evidence based cupboard was empty—that all of the drugs were of dubious effectiveness, had varying degrees of neurotoxicity, created abnormal mental states (which can be lifesaving for some at certain points in their distress) rather than corrected them, and were different from illicit drugs only through who provides them and how they are subsequently used rather than because of discoveries of some particular therapeutic potency.

In biological psychiatry a reliance on psychotropic drugs has encouraged some remarkable developments such as an increase in the numbers and a worsening of the long term prognosis for those categorised as mentally ill,2 and an increase in stigma that is associated with the model that mental illness is “an illness like any other illness.”3 Freed from the corrupting shackles of the pharmaceutical industry we can put money into better understanding the factors that have the biggest effects on outcome: social factors outside of treatment and the therapeutic relationship within treatment.4

Competing interests: None declared.

1 Wise J. Research into treatments for mental illness is under threat. BMJ 2011;342:d3747. (14 June.)
2 Whitaker R. Anatomy of an epidemic . Crown, 2010.
3 Read J, Haslam N, Sayce L, Davies E. Prejudice and schizophrenia: a review of the
‘mental illness is an illness like any other’ approach. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2006;114:303-18.
4 Timimi S. Campaign to Abolish Psychiatric Diagnostic Systems such as ICD and DSM (CAPSID). 2011. Available at: www.criticalpsychiatry.net/?p=527.