Mental health and mental illness were originally grouped and negatively stereotyped since not enough research or literature gave support to psychiatry in the early stages of the field. The general stereotype, which some cultures still suffer from today, is that mental illness means you carry bad genes that lend to your inability function in that culture’s norms.
A recent study compared a sample public’s definition and reaction to mental illness from the 1950’s and 1950’s to this century and found that while the conceptions of mental illness have broadened over time due to education and discussions through media and other easily digested venues, the fear that mentally ill people are frightening or violent has grown as definitions encompass a broader range diagnosis from non-psychotic disorders to much more extreme diagnosis as those that include the propensity for self-harm or harming others with creative measures (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000). Pierre (2012) explains that despite such conceptualization, efforts to form a classification system for mental disorders rooted in medical diagnosis and create clinical descriptions of symptoms aided in American psychiatry transitioning away from the notion of mental illness meaning people belonging in psychotic asylums and engender a feeling that everyone may suffer from a mental illness at one point or another in their lifetime.
Two ways in which this conceptualization of mental illness is manifest in my life comes from my culture, Egyptian. My family is from a culture where the concept of going to see a mental health professional is shunned because it is seen negatively as someone being broken or weak when they are told they need to seek help or when they admit to needing to see a psychologist or psychiatrist. However, after demonstrating to them the kind of help that can come from seeing the right clinician I was able to show that mental health just suffers the public’s scorn due to lack of education.
This helps me apply the same ideas to my local community by explaining, for example, we should not shun a religious group of people simply because it isn’t understood so well. One can even take this specific kind of argument to the next step and say in the history of psychology and psychiatry we had people that experimented on humans unethically, take lobotomies as an example and similar to that are certain groups that radicalize a religion like the crusades or the Islamic extremists. This conceptualization helps to humble me in my approach to psychology and the families I would like to reach and help. This also helps me stay focused in the way I will diagnose people because I will be cognizant of their background, their culture, their ailments and removing myself and my bias from the kind of help that they need to get through me.
The other point to consider is that while the literature on psychology and therapy is growing and the acceptance of psychological health is growing, we cannot say that anyone is a perfect example of perfect psychological health anymore because our understanding has grown so much to accept that everyone is currently dealing with trauma or mental ailments. Pierre (2012) uses the example of saying that following this understanding that psychological health shouldn’t be built on the idea that being healthy means being completely free of disordered emotional or cognitive responses, otherwise coma victims are the paragon of mental health.
Reference
Phelan, J. C., Link, B. G., Stueve, A., & Pescosolido, B. A. (2000). Public conceptions of mental illness in 1950 and 1996: what is mental illness and is it to be feared?. Journal of Health and Social behavior, 188-207.
Pierre, J. M. (2012). Mental illness and mental health: Is the glass half empty or half full? Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 57(11), 651–658.
Jennifer L. K. Charles, Kia J. Bentley. (2016) Stigma as an organizing framework for understanding the early history of community mental health and psychiatric social work. Social Work in Mental Health 14:2, pages 149-173.
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