American Psychiatric Association

Unsung Heroes of Psychiatric Wards The cliche phrase ‘don 't judge a book by its cover’ has been around for generations. Who would have guessed that one of America’s most loved movie stars and sex icons, Marilyn Monroe, had depression and a form of schizophrenia? In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey proves that people with mental illness should not be frowned upon because they do not fit in with the rest of the cookie-cutter society. Kesey uses a realist approach to make people…

A once connected community of rich relations among one another and constant interaction with numerous people throughout the day has simply transformed into a consumption of screens, gadgets and isolation. A sharp decrease in social connectedness over the past 20 years has alarmed scientists at Duke University that describe social connectedness as a crucial factor in the way that humans were designed to function. The toll it takes on humans is the drastic increase in vulnerability to mental…

young man named Hunter Adams admits himself into a psychiatric hospital. While he is there he learns that he has a passion for helping people with humor. He also gets the nickname Patch while there when talking to a patient. The movie shows that doctors should not be walking around the hospitals like they are above everyone else. That doctors should befriend the nurses and focus on patients and not the disease. When Patch Adams was in the psychiatric hospital he learned to look past the…

“Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen is based on a true story about the author, who spent time at a mental institution called McLean Hospital in the late 1960’s. Throughout the book the author writes about her experiences at the hospital and the people she encountered while she was there. While Susanna Kaysen encountered many people at McLean, none played a major role in the conflict that arises in the book, which is Susanna being sent to the institution and having to face her mental illness.…

This movie awakening is based on the book of neurologist Oliver Sacks, it is based on the real life story of the author Dr. Sacks he is the one who initiate to change the names of the characters, even his name so they come up with Dr. Sayer the movie is directed by Penny Marshall, it gives the people a great story about a Doctor named Malcolm Sayer played by the late actor Robin Williams he is working in Bronx, one of the hospital in New York. He met the patient named Leonard Lowe who is…

One of the major themes in the book, Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, is the overlap of freedom and captivity. An example of this is how at McLean Hospital the patients are ‘free’ from the pressures of society, like judgement and responsibility. However, on page 47, Kaysen writes that, “Freedom was the price of privacy,” describing how the mentally ill were only able to get privacy by giving up their freedom. This is visited again on page 94, when she says that, “In a strange way we were…

At any point in a criminal proceeding that a defendant shows signs of mental illness, his competence to proceed to stand trial may be questioned. In theory, the requirement that a criminal defendant be mentally competent before the trial can proceed assures that the defendant will receive a fair trial (Morris et al. 2004). The Supreme Court has long considered a competency to be a right of the criminal defendant in court. The defendant 's awareness and sanity must be intact to have him stand…

Pilot program only evaluated hospitalization over eighteen months, the Kendra law evaluated over a period of thirty-six months. Kendra’s law placed a significant value on the hospitalization, regardless whether the hospitalization had a direct association with the mental illness or not. This would jeopardize individuals who wouldn’t truly require outpatient commitment and take a toll on their everyday…

more common to get a psychiatric prescription from a primary doctor than from a Psychiatrist; The correct treatment or diagnosis is not received due to misinformation from the wrong type of doctor (Smith, Inappropriate). This statement is only enhanced by Kevin P Miller’s film, Generation Rx: Resisting the Culture of Overmedication. Miller puts together detailed accounts of the damage caused by psychiatric medication prescribed by non-other that our trusted doctors. Psychiatric drugs are…

state funded mental institutions have changed their methods drastically throughout the years. The various types of abuse that the patients had to endure through were horrifying. Misdiagnosis such as deafness was considered retardation, and the psychiatric would sentence them into the institutions without considering a second option or opinion. The facilities would often intentionally over prescribe pills, and practically overdose their patients. The patients had no rights to refuse what was…