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The anti-asylum movement or anti-asylum fight (Portuguese: movimento antimanicomial) is an organized movement in Brazil consisting of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers requesting a humanitarian improvement in psychiatrist public services. University campuses, hospitals and workers of the field promote events in order to raise awareness and fight discrimination against mental patients.
The movement itself was born after a chain of worldwide political events and is celebrated on May 18 in Brazil. On May 18, 1987, about 350 employees of Mental Health reunited in the Brazilian city of Bauru, state of São Paulo in order to discuss and propose ways to change the archaic and inefficient Mental Health System in the country.
In its roots, the movement is connected to the Reforma Sanitária Brasileira (Brazilian Sanitary Reform) whose outcome was the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) ("Unified Health System"). It's also related to deinstitutionalisation of Psychiatry developed in the cities of Gorizia and Trieste in Italy, by Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia in the 1960s. [1]
As a crucial part of its ongoing movement, Psychiatric Reform took place under Law 10216 of 2001 (Lei Paulo Delgado) seeking reformulation of the current model adopted by Mental Asylums, changing the focus of the treatment from systematic hospitalization to a more Psychosocial approach, including community and open services. According to the Brazilian anti-Asylum movement, public healthcare and mental health is a political and social complex process, composed by participants, institutions and actions of different sources taking place in many territories. It's a conjuncture of transformations in practices, knowledge, cultural and social values whose responsibility belongs not only to the hospital but also the government and people in interpersonal relationships. Therefore, the treatment is supposed to be held in a community base and the patients shall be given protection and receive proper treatment according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Their agenda aims a change in the belief that mental disorders are treated solely with medications and institutionalization. It launches a campaign against the prejudice and discrimination faced by patients, whose identity and virtues are often ignored in the process, giving then importance to psychotherapy and dialogue, distancing those placed under care from stressful environments while integrating them with family, friends and significant others. Anti-asylum movement is also responsible for the privilege given to stable patients to have freedom to transit in and out the institution while sleeping in their own homes.
The conditions of mental health in Brazil improved slightly, as the Psychiatric Institutionalization is still not over and many hospitals across the country still haven't adapted themselves to the new regent laws. A considerable amount of asylums were transformed into Centers of Psychosocial Attention (Brazilian Portuguese: "Centros de Atenção Psicossocial", simply known as "CAPS").
Involuntary commitment, civil commitment, involuntary hospitalization or involuntary hospitalisation, is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is detained in a psychiatric hospital (inpatient) where they can be treated involuntarily. This treatment may involve the administration of psychoactive drugs, including involuntary administration. In many jurisdictions, people diagnosed with mental health disorders can also be forced to undergo treatment while in the community; this is sometimes referred to as outpatient commitment and shares legal processes with commitment.
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health units or behavioral health units, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialize only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients. Others may specialize in the temporary or permanent containment of patients who need routine assistance, treatment, or a specialized and controlled environment due to a psychiatric disorder. Patients often choose voluntary commitment, but those whom psychiatrists believe to pose significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment. Psychiatric hospitals may also be called psychiatric wards/units when they are a subunit of a regular hospital.
Anti-psychiatry is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections may include concerns about the effectiveness and potential harm of treatments such as electroconvulsive treatment or insulin shock therapy.
Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work practice draws from areas, such as psychology, sociology, health, political science, community development, law, and economics to engage with systems and policies, conduct assessments, develop interventions, and enhance social functioning and responsibility. Social work practice is often divided into three levels. Micro-work involves working directly with individuals and families, such as providing individual counseling/therapy or assisting a family in accessing services. Mezzo-work involves working with groups and communities, such as conducting group therapy or providing services for community agencies. Macro-work involves fostering change on a larger scale through advocacy, social policy, research development, non-profit and public service administration, or working with government agencies. Starting in the 1980s, a few universities began social work management programmes, to prepare students for the management of social and human service organizations, in addition to classical social work education.
The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. The participants feigned hallucinations to enter psychiatric hospitals but acted normally afterwards. They were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and were given antipsychotic medication. The study was conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan, a Stanford University professor, and published by the journal Science in 1973 under the title "On Being Sane in Insane Places". It is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis, and broached the topic of wrongful involuntary commitment. Rosenhan along with 8 other people went into these 12 hospitals across 5 states along the West coast of the US. The pseudo-patients who were only admitted for a short period of time went to a different hospital, hence they went to 12 hospitals but there were only 9 participants altogether.
Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences cognition, perception, and behavior. It also determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental health includes subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others. From the perspectives of positive psychology or holism, mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and to create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how one defines "mental health". Some early signs related to mental health problems are sleep irritation, lack of energy and thinking of harming yourself or others.
Moral treatment was an approach to mental disorder based on humane psychosocial care or moral discipline that emerged in the 18th century and came to the fore for much of the 19th century, deriving partly from psychiatry or psychology and partly from religious or moral concerns. The movement is particularly associated with reform and development of the asylum system in Western Europe at that time. It fell into decline as a distinct method by the 20th century, however, due to overcrowding and misuse of asylums and the predominance of biomedical methods. The movement is widely seen as influencing certain areas of psychiatric practice up to the present day. The approach has been praised for freeing sufferers from shackles and barbaric physical treatments, instead considering such things as emotions and social interactions, but has also been criticised for blaming or oppressing individuals according to the standards of a particular social class or religion.
Deinstitutionalisation is the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health services for those diagnosed with a mental disorder or developmental disability. In the late 20th century, it led to the closure of many psychiatric hospitals, as patients were increasingly cared for at home, in halfway houses and clinics, in regular hospitals, or not at all.
The psychiatric survivors movement is a diverse association of individuals who either currently access mental health services, or who are survivors of interventions by psychiatry.
Mad Pride is a mass movement of the users of mental health services, former users, and the aligned, which advocates that individuals with mental illness should be proud of their 'mad' identity. It was formed in 1993 in response to local community prejudices towards people with a psychiatric history living in boarding homes in the Parkdale area of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and an event has been held every year since then in the city except for 1996. A similar movement began around the same time in the United Kingdom. By the late 1990s similar events were being organized under the Mad Pride name around the globe, including Australia, Ireland, Portugal, Brazil, Madagascar, South Africa, France, South Korea and the United States. Events draw thousands of participants, according to MindFreedom International, a United States mental health advocacy organization that promotes and tracks events spawned by the movement.
Virginia Gonzalez Torres is a female human rights activist in Mexico who provides support and resources for the mentally ill. She is often referred to as the Dorothea Dix of Mexico.
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
In clinical and abnormal psychology, institutionalization or institutional syndrome refers to deficits or disabilities in social and life skills, which develop after a person has spent a long period living in mental hospitals, prisons or other remote institutions. In other words, individuals in institutions may be deprived of independence and of responsibility, to the point that once they return to "outside life" they are often unable to manage many of its demands; it has also been argued that institutionalized individuals become psychologically more prone to mental health problems.
The lunatic asylum was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
Psychiatric reform in Italy is the reform of psychiatry which started in Italy after the passing of Basaglia Law in 1978 and terminated with the very end of the Italian state mental hospital system in 1998. Among European countries, Italy was the first to publicly declare its repugnance for a mental health care system which led to social exclusion and segregation. The psychiatric reform was also a consequence of a public debate sparked by Giorgio Coda's case and stories collected and analyzed in Alberto Papuzzi's book Portami su quello che canta.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the psychiatric survivors movement:
Peter Lehmann, D. Phil. h.c., is an author, social scientist, publisher, and an independent freelance activist in humanistic anti-psychiatry, living in Berlin, Germany.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to psychiatry:
Tower Psychiatric Hospital is a government-funded psychiatric hospital and psychosocial rehabilitation Centre in the Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality area of Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape in South Africa. It provides long-term psychiatric care and psychosocial rehabilitation services to the entire Eastern Cape. The hospital has a full-time psychiatrist since December 2015.
Museu da Loucura, formerly known as Hospital Colônia was a psychiatric hospital founded in 1903. The institution was located in the Brazilian city of Barbacena, Minas Gerais. From its foundation to 1980, Colônia was theater of a genocide. Official estimates report over 60,000 deaths occurred inside the wards due to medical malpractice and torture over the years. Italian Psychiatrist Franco Basaglia compared the place to a Nazi concentration camp. In 2013, Brazilian journalist Daniela Arbex released an investigative book called O Holocausto Brasileiro telling the stories of survivors and victims. The events inside Colônia were also a boost for the national anti-asylum movement.