HLTHAGE 1CC3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Biological Psychiatry, Anti-Psychiatry, Erving Goffman
31 Jan 2020
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Sixties attacks on authority, rise of counterculture: many protests, questioning the police, official structures like the government, laws, marriage, drug use, traditional authority under attack, era of hippie movement. "mental illness" the result of a powerless individual caught doing something deviant by socially powerful others, who them label that person: label shapes their fate. Creates an identity of "ill" that reifies behaviour: reinforces their behaviour after they take on the identity, psychiatry a powerful social tool that regulates deviance and maintains the social order. Thomas szasz: psychiatrist, opposed to limitation on individual freedom, distrusted government, opposed system that limited a persons autonomy and right to freedom, hungarian-born american psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis, the myth of mental illness (1961) book. Deinstitutionalization: psychiatric meds the driving force behind deinstitutionalization, but anti-psychiatry movement. Influenced public perception of ect, lobotomy, institutions, profession itself important as well. Failure of deinstitutionalization: rise of homeless mentally ill population. Funds saved from hospitals never went to community care.
