Psychiatry

Throughout history there has been many perspectives on what mental illness is and how to treat it. These mental illness perspectives set the scene for the development of clinical psychology, which did not become a specialty within psychology until the late 1800’s. Clinical psychology focuses on understanding, assessing, and treating behavioral and psychological disorders and problems (Plante, 2011). According to Plante (2011), “clinical psychology uses what is known about the principles of human…

In this research study, researchers used digital span testing to assess memory problems associated with schizophrenic African Americans. The digital span testing involves schizophrenic individuals to repeat a series of digits forward or in reverse order. Culture also plays an important role in diagnosing and evaluating African-Americans. For instance, cultural mistrust result in misdiagnoses in African-American. According to the low mistrust group, psychiatric symptoms negatively affected…

What research needs to be done to help prevent suicide? Where should we start? Mental illness. Mental illness is a huge factor in suicides. Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, points out that an excess of stress from life may appear to be the reason people attempt suicide; people from the outside looking in seem to think that those who take their own lives just couldn’t handle…

INTRODUCTION How do we define, diagnose, and classify psychological disorders? Validity is an important topic for the development of modern psychiatry. It is used to examine truth or falsity of scientific propositions. Diagnosis is important to everything that is done in the medicine field. It is critical for applying effective and appropriate treatment for any disorder. It also allows clinicians and scientists to have communication in regards to diseases. Before the systems of diagnostic…

One of the world’s leading researchers in the area of cross-cultural psychiatry and global mental health, Arthur Kleinman, has made it known that chronic mental illness isn’t just a disease but how it affects us and the people around us. From Kleinman’s book, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition, makes it clear that experiences of illness can be told through personal narratives. Personal narratives is often known as illness narrative which can be described as a…

not have. Sometimes, behavioral issues in children are seen as having a mental disorder. Therefore, some children with behavioral issues are prescribed with medication for illnesses they do not have. Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D., the chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, addresses this problem in an interview. He explains “anti-psychotic drugs are indicated, principally, to treat psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, and schizophrenia…

Wystan Hugh Auden, an Anglo-American poet, once said “A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before their own.”…

Barbara Tuchman argues that advertising in America is flooding our minds with pictures of perfection and goals of happiness that are seemingly easy to attain. Advertising is in the air Americans breathe and for those who feed on little else, advertisements leave a certain fuzziness of perception. As we absorb the unattainable images of perfection and happiness, it leaves us with a false impression and misleading picture of reality. The consequences of advertising in American can be damaging to…

apparent that those with mental illness would best benefit from community programs such as the Supported Housing project. Total Institutions By the end of the 1800s there was a movement to treat those with mental illness more humanely with the use of psychiatry/psychology and religion, as well as an emphasis on the belief that there was a cure that could be found through treatments. This shift in belief lead to psychiatric facilities that provided long-term care of those with mental illnesses.…

Poets, writers, and artists have suffered with the monsters of mental illness for decades; however, the theory that there may be a correlation between creativity and mental illness goes all the way back to Aristotle’s time. Although there have been many different surveys conducted over time testing the connection between mental illness and creativity, it is still unclear if there is a distinct connection between the two. Many believe that mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and…