need help with my essay …

i think i see what u mean 🙂

that people should be listened to and their actual symptoms and situation listened to rather than just grouped into a label of say “depression”

its a good argument Kerrie 🙂 

what about if their symptoms are created by society … at the moment economic situation isnt good – what if a father loses his job and cant get another, he becomes depressed as ‘he’s let his family down’ is that “his fault” that men are portrayed in society as main wage earners which puts more expectation onto him or that the economy is crippled and jobs are fewer – is that his fault ?  what if his child needs special care in some way and he now cannot provide so feels inadequate …

arent these actually problems of society, economics and politics – not anything “abnormal” or “mad” about the individual themselves ?  is it right then to lock them away and take all their freedom and dignity in a mental hospital when things get so bad they try to take their own life (say because they cant bear the emotional pain, or to give wife/family money on insurance??)

arent these all the man trying to live up to social expectations and because he’s not falling within our tight social “norms” … suddenly he’s mad, deluded, ….. inhuman …?  :'(

(can you tell i got fed up of mental health “care” along time ago !!!!)

interesting isnt it … 🙂

claire x

i think ur right kerrie 🙂

i am hoping that my own experience will help me to make a difference in some of these ways.  the stats are really awful something like 10% of ppl with schizophrenia take their life 🙁  

mudgie – arent a persons beliefs and coping strategies learned (from soc/cult/ethnic etc…) and if an individual has coping mechanisms (such as self-harm) that are seen as ‘mal-adaptive’ in society – society position them as ‘doubly abnormal’ …?

as you say “situations that trigger….” – surely these are all environmental and thus not located within the individual person ?

it could be argued that people are “locked away” to remove abnormality from society – politically influenced as funding allocation is from govt. policies and under their control.  

mudgie – your own viewpoint is very mainstream and one sided.  ‘cbt’ type approaches are not suitable for many many people suffering from psychological distress.  they are widely criticised and rely totally on an assumption of rationality and good language skills.  they also rely on the person accepting that the distress comes from within and the argument is that it doesnt.  it is socially constructed from our environment.

i dont have a “blackened view” because of my own experience – I am constructing an academic argument about how problematic it is for psychological distress to be located within the person.  take another example – schizophrenia, one of the main experiences are auditory hallucinations … in this culture hugely problematic and until very recently got you locked away for a fair stint (see Rosenhan, 1974 for how easy it was) but in a culture where hearing voices is held in high esteem / valued you become a sacred person ..  “the person” is still the same – its the environmental understanding of the experience which creates all the distress …

mental hospitals can be hugely problematic – people become their label, invisible in all but diagnosis.  this is what a great deal of the studies show … whats a label anyway ?  shorthand for medics to “understand you” … isnt that problematic, doesnt it strip away the very social experiences which are the root of the distress ?

the symptoms of depression are not ‘all the same’ there are several different subtypes of neurotic depression and atleast two that you could argue were borderline with neurotic and psychotic elements.  and thats “mainstream” from ICD/DSM classifications – even for one instance you can pick from a list of different “symptoms” to become “diagnosed”.  also – where’s the line … who decides you are “depressed” .. society does (politics, education, culture ….) one day you wake up and you are “abnormal” … a bit like at 12 midnight all food that has a use by date for that day immediately goes bad – no it doesnt … someone just decided an arbitrary time because of political guidelines 🙂

claire x

p.s. there isnt a “right” answer 😀  its an academic argument – you just take a standpoint and go 🙂  and to be honest the more i research this the more scary the world becomes !!  i just didnt realise how many everyday boring un-noticed (dominant social norms) things can be problematic for minority groups.  

n.b. i am not saying that some approaches are not valid or reliable – just that some can be questioned and critiqued 🙂  some ppl even go as far to argue depression doesnt exist – those people are just really really existential and grounded as studies show depressed ppl give better estimates of theirs and others skills etc … than non depressed ppl … ecological psychology might argue that it serves a purpose to regulate and control populations …

aah … it would seem they also wrote a self help book on coping 😀

its interesting but very mainstream/cbt – again, discriminatory assumptions …

oooh i like this critiquing business lol !!  maybe thats what pessimistic people were made for lol !!! 🙂

claire x