HLTHAGE 1CC3 Lecture 7: Lecture 7
27 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
May 24, 2017
Mental Health Lecture 7
There will be 36 questions on the midterm: you get 2 hours:
Multiple choice.
Office hours Monday 29th of May immediately after class. NOT 31.
On June 5th, lecture will begin at 4:30…we have a guest lecturer: Testable.
What do we mean by limits?
Limits of mental illness: at some point a person stops being mentally healthy, and starts being mentally
ill (binary states, at least that’s how society views it).
Where do we stop defining something as mental health and begin to define it as mental illness?
Is normality an objective concept?
Typically, gut instinct=no, but the DSM and psychiatrists functions to define normality; because
as soon as you define abnormality, what remains has to be normal.
Choice and personal responsibility
By and large, much mental disorders defining criteria is behavioural; actions that a person
preforms, or things they say they feel. To some extent, this seem to intersect with the question
of choice. If you’re preforming a behaviour, where is it that you stop choosing, and start
becoming a victim/subject of illness? (free will).
Think: somatic illness (e.g. lung cancer), some could argue that people choose to bring it on by
certain behaviours, like smoking. Are mental disorders different than this?
What is it’s not harmful?
For almost every DSM disorder, the person’s behaviour/thinking must impact their social or
occupational functioning. Here, context becomes really important. E.g. hyper sexuality; for a
university student, it’s not really a problem (assuming you’re having sex safely) …but if you
change the context and suddenly the person is a politician, its now a problem?
Where does the person stop and the disorder begin?
The idea is that there is you, and a separate entity that you possesswhere is the line between
you and the disorder. If a drug is treating an illness, what does it do to the person? How is the
person impacted?
Think: we can treat cancer with chemo, or cells; can we say that we are treating mental
disorders?
When should we “treat” a person?
When is it that a person’s thoughts and behaviours become so problematic and distinguished
from normality that they require some sort of intervention?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
May 24, 2017
Emergence of Hyperactivity
Started in Rhode Island at Bradley Home (home for orphans). As part of their intake, children had to
undergo neurological testing (including a spinal tap). To avoid the headaches that occurred after the
spinal tap, children were given a stimulant (Benzedrine) found that these children ended up
preforming far better in the classroom, more attentive/better behaved/etc.
These findings were published, there was virtually no response. Why?
There’s no market for this people thought, so what? Hyperactivity as a phenomenon did not
exist as an identifiable thing in children; as something special, different, or distinct.
In late 1950s, researchers from same facility publish on hyperkinetic impulse disorder. The symptoms
parallel with what we would now call ADHD. In their description, they stated that it was more common
in boys than girls. They also stated that “all children are prone to this behaviour”, but “these kids were
more like normal children than the severely disturbed”. They are like a bridge between normal and
abnormal.
They were creating a definition of what was abnormal.
Included in the diagnostic criteria, was explicitly linked to scholastic performance. Here, school is
being built into the diagnostic criteria for the first time.
By the 1970s, discussions about growing epidemic from hyperactivity began. So we go from
hyperactivity not even being a thing in 1930s to an “epidemic that has to be solved” in 1970s.
Why did hyperactivity explode?
1) Usefulness of hyperactivity label: Familial status (highly educated, problems at home with
parents, etc.), school itself (layout of classroom, quality of teacher, number of students, bullying
on playground). All these issues get distilled into the “useful label” that the person just has a
hyperactivity problem.
a. The researchers then underplay the social value.
2) Simple idea: Parents understood, its not that you were failing as a parent. Schools like it, school
isn’t not performing well. Government liked it, curriculum wasn’t a problem, neither was
funding.
3) Baby boom: all of this is happening when school age population is increasing. Class sizes larger,
not enough teachers, teachers that are there were not well educated because rushed through
for demand.
a. Poor educated teachers in a swelling class size, there is less tolerance for disruptive
behaviours, less individual time with students.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
There will be 36 questions on the midterm: you get 2 hours: Office hours monday 29th of may immediately after class. On june 5th, lecture will begin at 4:30 we have a guest lecturer: testable. Limits of mental illness: at some point a person stops being mentally healthy, and starts being mentally ill (binary states, at least that"s how society views it). Typically, gut instinct=no, but the dsm and psychiatrists functions to define normality; because as soon as you define abnormality, what remains has to be normal. By and large, much mental disorders defining criteria is behavioural; actions that a person preforms, or things they say they feel. To some extent, this seem to intersect with the question of choice. If you"re preforming a behaviour, where is it that you stop choosing, and start becoming a victim/subject of illness? (free will).
