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Works of fiction dealing with mental illness include:
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2010) |
Works of fiction dealing with mental illness include:
Many motion pictures portray mental illness in inaccurate ways, leading to misunderstanding and heightened stigmatization of the mentally ill. However, some movies are lauded for dispelling stereotypes and providing insight into mental illness. In a study by George Gerbner, it was determined that 5 percent of 'normal' television characters are murderers, while 20% of 'mentally-ill' characters are murderers. 40% of normal characters are violent, while 70% of mentally-ill characters are violent. Contrary to what is portrayed in films and television, Henry J. Steadman, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Policy Research Associates found that, overall, formal mental patients did not have a higher rate of violence than the control group of people who were not formal mental patients. In both groups, however, substance abuse was linked to a higher rate of violence. (Hockenbury and Hockenbury, 2004)
Many popular television shows feature characters with a mental health condition. Often these portrayals are inaccurate and reinforce existing stereotypes, thereby increasing stigma associated with having a mental health condition. Common ways that television shows can generate misunderstanding and fear are by depicting people with these conditions as medically noncompliant, violent, and/or intellectually challenged. However, in recent years certain organizations have begun to advocate for accurate portrayals of mental health conditions in the media, and certain television shows have been applauded by mental health organizations for helping to dispel myths of these conditions.
One show, Wonderland , went on the air in 2000 and only lasted several episodes. It was largely critically acclaimed, but pressure from mental health advocates and people with mental health conditions, who felt that the show perpetuated stereotypes and contributed to the stigma attached to them, led to the show's cancellation.
The Scandinavian crime drama The Bridge features multiple examples of mental illness, most prominently including Münchausen syndrome by proxy.
In 2005, the shows Huff ; Monk ; Scrubs ; and ER all won Voice Awards from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for their positive portrayal of people who manage mental health conditions. Neal Baer, executive producer of ER and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit also won a lifetime achievement award for his work in incorporating mental health issues into these two shows.
United States of Tara is a television show about dissociative identity disorder.
The Steven Universe franchise features characters with psychological trauma.
The animated Netflix series, Bojack Horseman dives into themes about depression, generalized anxiety, self-destructive behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder, narcissism and substance abuse
The Animated Netflix series, Arcane (TV series) presents the story of two sisters suffering from extreme trauma. Fans trust Jinx suffers from borderline personality disorder, PTSD and Schizophrenia, while Vi has extreme childhood trauma.
The game Silent Hill 2 of the same genres contains three major characters struggling with mental illness. Though their conditions are never named, two of these characters exhibit symptoms which, together with their backstories, may suggest acute dissociative amnesia; while the third character most definitively approximates body dysmorphic disorder. (The topic of dissociative amnesia is revisited in later installments of the series.) In addition, both this game and Silent Hill 3 mention various former patients of the now-abandoned town's local psychiatric hospital, with one said patient making an appearance in the latter game. Life is Strange deals with depression, suicide most notably, as the main character Max tries to prevent the suicide of one of her friends. One of the characters exhibits concerning behaviors and is prescribed medicines most often associated with bipolar and schizophrenia. It is implied he is seeing a psychiatrist.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc deals with a side character named Toko Fukawa who suffers from DID. Her first identity being a well-known writer. Her second identity was a serial killer. The next character who has a canon mental illness is Nagito Komaeda, a loved character from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair who suffers from lymphoma in stage 3 and has Frontotemporal dementia.
Final Fantasy VII implies numerous times that the main character, Cloud Strife, has some form of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.
In Pokémon Sword and Shield , Chairman Rose is shown to have a severe idée fixe about a far-off energy crisis.
Myst III: Exile features a character named Saavedro, full of despair and a justified grievance, who has been trapped alone for twenty years, certain that all his people are dead. In his journal he writes of a mental fog that he can lose himself in from time to time (he suspects for months sometimes), when he "can barely remember what I've done". He describes this fog as eating his mind and writes that he sometimes struggles to bring memories back to the surface.
Dementia praecox is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. Over the years, the term dementia praecox was gradually replaced by the term schizophrenia, which initially had a meaning that included what is today considered the autism spectrum.
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, or behavioral health hospitals are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative identity disorder, major depressive disorder, and others.
Anti-psychiatry, sometimes spelled antipsychiatry without the hyphen, is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections include the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis, the questionable effectiveness and harm associated with psychiatric medications, the failure of psychiatry to demonstrate any disease treatment mechanism for psychiatric medication effects, and legal concerns about equal human rights and civil freedom being nullified by the presence of diagnosis. Historical critiques of psychiatry came to light after focus on the extreme harms associated with electroconvulsive therapy or insulin shock therapy. The term "anti-psychiatry" is in dispute and often used to dismiss all critics of psychiatry, many of whom agree that a specialized role of helper for people in emotional distress may at times be appropriate, and allow for individual choice around treatment decisions.
Insanity, madness, lunacy, and craziness are behaviors caused by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity can manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person or persons becoming a danger to themselves or to other people. Conceptually, mental insanity also is associated with the biological phenomenon of contagion as in the case of copycat suicides. In contemporary usage, the term insanity is an informal, un-scientific term denoting "mental instability"; thus, the term insanity defense is the legal definition of mental instability. In medicine, the general term psychosis is used to include the presence of delusions and/or hallucinations in a patient; and psychiatric illness is "psychopathology", not mental insanity.
Philippe Pinel was a French physician, precursor of psychiatry and incidentally a zoologist. He was instrumental in the development of a more humane psychological approach to the custody and care of psychiatric patients, referred to today as moral therapy. He worked for the abolition of the shackling of mental patients by chains and, more generally, for the humanisation of their treatment. He also made notable contributions to the classification of mental disorders and has been described by some as "the father of modern psychiatry".
Richard Bentall is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK.
Historically, mental disorders have had three major explanations, namely, the supernatural, biological and psychological models. For much of recorded history, deviant behavior has been considered supernatural and a reflection of the battle between good and evil. When confronted with unexplainable, irrational behavior and by suffering and upheaval, people have perceived evil. In fact, in the Persian Empire from 550 to 330 B.C., all physical and mental disorders were considered the work of the devil. Physical causes of mental disorders have been sought in history. Hippocrates was important in this tradition as he identified syphilis as a disease and was, therefore, an early proponent of the idea that psychological disorders are biologically caused. This was a precursor to modern psycho-social treatment approaches to the causation of psychopathology, with the focus on psychological, social and cultural factors. Well known philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, etc., wrote about the importance of fantasies, dreams, and thus anticipated, to some extent, the fields of psychoanalytic thought and cognitive science that were later developed. They were also some of the first to advocate for humane and responsible care for individuals with psychological disturbances.
The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each was 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".
Richard Noll is an American clinical psychologist and historian of medicine. He has published on the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung, books and articles on the history of dementia praecox and schizophrenia, and on anthropology on shamanism. His books and articles have been translated into fifteen foreign languages and he has delivered invited presentations in nineteen countries on six continents.
The biopsychiatry controversy is a dispute over which viewpoint should predominate and form a basis of psychiatric theory and practice. The debate is a criticism of a claimed strict biological view of psychiatric thinking. Its critics include disparate groups such as the antipsychiatry movement and some academics.
Islamic psychology or ʿilm al-nafs, the science of the nafs, is the medical and philosophical study of the psyche from an Islamic perspective and addresses topics in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and psychiatry as well as psychosomatic medicine. In Islam, mental health and mental illness were viewed with a holistic approach. This approach emphasized the mutual connection between maintaining adequate mental wellbeing and good physical health in an individual. People who practice Islam thought it was necessary to maintain positive mental health in order to partake in prayer and other religious obligations.
This is a timeline of the modern development of psychiatry. Related information can be found in the Timeline of psychology and Timeline of psychotherapy articles.
Folie à deux, also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder (SDD), is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief, are "transmitted" from one individual to another.
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
The word schizophrenia was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908, and was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and perception. Bleuler introduced the term on 24 April 1908 in a lecture given at a psychiatric conference in Berlin and in a publication that same year. Bleuler later expanded his new disease concept into a monograph in 1911, which was finally translated into English in 1950.
Denpa (電波), also denpa-kei (電波系) or denpa-san (電波さん), is a Japanese term for people who may feel disconnected from reality or dissociated from the people around them. Individuals with schizophrenia may experience vivid fantasies, persecutory delusions, or other intense beliefs. Their speech and actions may appear odd or confusing to those around them. This societal perspective is similar to the way Japanese culture views otaku who suffer from maladaptive daydreaming disorder, paranoia, or schizophrenia.
Mental illnesses, also known as psychiatric disorders, are often inaccurately portrayed in the media. Films, television programs, books, magazines, and news programs often stereotype the mentally ill as being violent, unpredictable, or dangerous, unlike the great majority of those who experience mental illness. As media is often the primary way people are exposed to mental illnesses, when portrayals are inaccurate, they further perpetuate stereotypes, stigma, and discriminatory behavior. When the public stigmatizes the mentally ill, people with mental illnesses become less likely to seek treatment or support for fear of being judged or rejected by the public. However, with proper support, not only are most of those with psychiatric disorders able to function adequately in society, but many are able to work successfully and make substantial contributions to society.
Mental illness in ancient Rome was recognized in law as an issue of mental competence, and was diagnosed and treated in terms of ancient medical knowledge and philosophy, primarily Greek in origin, while at the same time popularly thought to have been caused by divine punishment, demonic spirits, or curses. Physicians and medical writers of the Roman world observed patients with conditions similar to anxiety disorders, mood disorders, dyslexia, schizophrenia, and speech disorders, among others, and assessed symptoms and risk factors for mood disorders as owing to alcohol abuse, aggression, and extreme emotions. It can be difficult to apply modern labels such as schizophrenia accurately to conditions described in ancient medical writings and other literature, which may for instance be referring instead to mania.