The ambivalent role of the institution in the history of child and adolescent psychiatry: a case study of the Hawthorn Centre in Michigan, USA

Historians have examined the role of psychiatric institutions in the USA and addressed whether this form of care helped or harmed patients (depending on the perspective of the time period, historical actors, and historians). But the story for children\u27s mental institutions was different. At the time when adult institutions were in decline, children\u27s mental hospitals were expanding. Parents and advocates clamoured for more beds and more services. The decrease in facilities for children was more due to economic factors than ideological opposition. This paper explores a case study of a hospital in Michigan as a window into the different characteristics of the discussion of psychiatric care for children

Access, accountability, and the proliferation of psychological therapy:On the introduction of the IAPT initiative and the transformation of mental healthcare

Psychological therapy today plays a key role in UK public mental health. In large part, this has been through the development of the (specifically English) Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Through IAPT, millions of citizens have encountered interventions such as cognitive behaviour therapy, largely for the treatment of depression and anxiety. This article interrogates how this national response to problems of mental ill-health – and the problematization itself – was developed, accounted for, and sustained. By imbricating economic expertise with accounts of mental ill-health and mechanisms of treatment, IAPT has revivified psychological framings of pathology and therapy. However, it has done so in ways that are more familiar within biomedical contexts (e.g. through recourse to randomized controlled trial studies). Today, the initiative is a principal player in relation to which other services are increasingly developed. Indeed, in many respects IAPT has transformed from content to context within UK public mental health (in a process of what I term ‘contextification’). By documenting these developments, this paper contributes to re-centring questions about the place and role of psychology in contemporary healthcare. Doing so helps to complicate assumptions about the dominance of linear forms of (de)biomedicalization in health-systems

Quantifying the Quiet Epidemic: Diagnosing Dementia in Twentieth Century Britain

During the late 20(th) century numerical rating scales became central to the diagnosis of dementia and helped transform attitudes about its causes and prevalence. Concentrating largely on the development and use of the Blessed Dementia Scale, I argue that rating scales served professional ends during the 1960s and 1970s. They helped old age psychiatrists establish jurisdiction over conditions such as dementia and present their field as a vital component of the welfare state, where they argued that ‘reliable modes of diagnosis’ were vital to the allocation of resources. I show how these arguments appealed to politicians, funding bodies and patient groups, who agreed that dementia was a distinct disease and claimed research on its causes and prevention should be designated ‘top priority’. But I also show that worries about the replacement of clinical acumen with technical and depersonalized methods, which could conceivably be applied by anyone, led psychiatrists to stress that rating scales had their limits and could be used only by trained experts

The senile mind: Psychology and old age in the 1930s and 1940s

In the 1930s, some psychologists began to study and discuss the normal and pathological mental abilities of old age. This paper explores this research and its implications for an emerging definition of old age in the 1930s and 1940s. The argument is that these psychologists explained old age in terms of tests they had performed on children and young adults. In addition, these professionals projected their culturally bound assumptions onto their study of old age. In the process, psychologists helped to define old age as a problem that required a professional solution. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34530/1/1096_ftp.pd

Men’s Discourses of Help‐seeking in the Context of Depression

Depression is an illness increasingly constructed as a gendered mood disorder and consequently diagnosed in women more than men. The diagnostic criteria used for its assessment often perpetrate and reproduce gender stereotypes. The stigma associated with mental illness and the gendered elements of depression suggest there are likely numerous discourses that position, explain, and justify help‐seeking practices. This qualitative study explored men’s discourses of seeking help for depression. The methodological approach was informed by a social constructionist perspective of language, discourse and gender that drew on methods from discourse analysis. We conducted individual in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with 38 men with depression, either formally diagnosed or self reported. The analysis revealed five discursive frames that influenced the men’s talk about help‐seeking and depression: manly self‐reliance; treatment‐seeking as responsible independent action; guarded vulnerability; desperation; and genuine connection. The findings are discussed within a broader context of social discourses of gender, the limitations of current help‐seeking literature and the evidence for how men seek help in ways that extend traditional notions of medical treatment

History, power, and electricity: American popular magazine accounts of electroconvulsive therapy, 1940–2005

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a psychiatric treatment that has been in use in the United States since the 1940s. During the whole of its existence, it has been extensively discussed and debated within American popular magazines. While initial reports of the treatment highlighted its benefits to patients, accounts by the 1970s and 1980s were increasingly polarized. This article analyzes the popular accounts over time, particularly the ways in which the debates over ECT have revolved around different interpretations of ECT's history and its power dynamics. © 2008Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57903/1/20283_ftp.pd

Women Psychologists within Academic Health Systems: Mentorship and Career Advancement

Women are underrepresented on the faculties and within the senior leadership ranks of academic health systems. Nevertheless, despite the continuing existence of career development challenges related to gender, it is possible for women to thrive professionally in these settings. Mentorship is extremely important, and it is argued that effective mentorship is facilitated by an understanding of both gender differences in social behaviors and the culture of academic health systems. Furthermore, a systems’ level emphasis on faculty diversity and the career development of women faculty is recommended.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44857/1/10880_2005_Article_5746.pd

Lo imaginario heroico: lectura literaria de Rufino Blanco-Fombona sobre el Libertador

Este trabajo se inserta en mi línea de investigación de Historia de la Cultura: «El ensayo literario en Venezuela». Blanco-Fombona, nacido en Caracas (1874-1944) ensayista por excelencia, fue uno de los intelectuales que más estudió la Figura y obra del Libertador para darla a conocer en todo el mundo, especialmente en Europa durante su exilio español. Bolívar, el héroe y el hombre que trasciende todas las fronteras. Fama y prestigio, a un nivel hasta entonces desconocido por los americanos, rodearon su nombre y lo distinguieron como el creador de la libertad de los pueblos. Es así como surgió este tema donde va a confluir el héroe, el mito, la imaginación y además el imaginario del propio Rufino Blanco-Fombona, escritor venezolano y a la vez universal. Se trata de confrontar al héroe «histórico» con el mito heroico a través de la figura de Bolívar. Lo imaginario vinculado a la sociedad, con la necesidad de crear arquetipos, mitos y héroes. Lo que cautelosamente se puede llamar «el culto al héroe» en Blanco-Fombona, lo lleva a desgajar sus elementos americanos y en particular venezolanos, para convertirlo en un héroe arquetípico universal. Es importante reconocer que se internó en las fuentes para su investigación del personaje y de la época. El arte de asociarse a la gloria del Libertador tiene por base la existencia de un sentimiento bolivariano en el pueblo de Venezuela. De ahí la vigencia e importancia del tema, pero también su sentido polémico. Su vigencia queda plasmada en la persistencia actual de su significado histórico y de sus ideas.AbstractThis work is within my line of investigation of History Culture: «The literary essay in Venezuela». Rufino Blanco-Fombona (1874-1944), essayist by excellence, was an «homme de lettre» who most studied all what it was written about Simón Bolívar, the Libertador so he could be known through out the world. Bolivar, the Hero and the Man. Fame and prestige, at a level up to now unknown to Americans, distinguished him as the founder of peoples freedom. This is how this theme came about where Hero, myth and imagination converge and more so the Imaginary of Rufino Blanco-Fombona himself. It is about facing the «historie» person against the heroic myth through the figure of one of the biggest heroes, Simón Bolívar. For the theoretical and methodological basis I used the works of Gaston Bachelard and his Maestro, Jean Paul Sartre, combined with the structuralism studies of Roland Barthes and the works of Maurice Blanchot. The Imaginary tied to the society with a necessity to create archetypes, myths and heroes. Furthermore, we focused the work from a perspective of the literary analysis, and in this case: all the essays from Blanco- Fombona about Bolivar to study his so called «Cult of the Hero». It is important to say that Blanco-Fombona used the original sources for his investigation of Bolivar an the period of the independence. The art of using for all events the Glory of the Libertador has his base in the existence of a «bolivarian» feeling in the Venezuelan people. That is the force of the theme but also the polemic sense