Mental Health

Mad Studies (Rachel Gorman and Brenda A. LeFrançois)

Over representation of racialized people as subjects of psychiatric violence

systemic critique of psy-violence, epistemic injustice, and sanism

Model of Madness and Distress (Peter Beresford)

• Social model of disability says the disabled people’s problems are to do with 2 things: 

  • 1. People’s impairments

  • 2. Society’s response to these impairments (most important)

• social barriers OVER individual difficulties

• Madness has a connotation of aggression and violence

• Trying to make a distinction between serious long term issues and less serious transient issues (more impaired vs less impaired??)

Mental Illness in Pop Culture

• Comparing two recent examples

  • Split (2017) 

  • The Joker (2019) 

• The gender divide

  • Women as hysterical, overly emotional, dangerous

  • Men as brooding, troubled, dangerous

• Gun violence & mental illness

  • Those with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrator

Wellness checks unintended consequences

• Deadly force from police 

• Disproportionate against people who had substance use problems and mental health challenges

• Police can use whatever force they want

• Black and Indigenous people are overrepresented in police killings

reasons for consequences

• Person could be paranoid and threatened

• Presence of police can be frightening

• No standard for wellness check protocols

  • Police training varies between provinces

  • Focus on use of force and not deescalation

• History of providing service after someone is in distress and not preventing the issue

GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

Mental illnesses are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood or behaviour associated with significant distress and impaired functioning.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION

Generally characterised by combination of abnormal thoughts, perceptions, emotions, behaviour, and relationships

Medical model management

• Mass institutionalisation

• Involuntary treatment

• Pathologising gender identities

  • Women as hysterical

  • Trans minds

• Loss of legal authority

• Reliance on pharmaceutical industry

Anti-Black Sanism

• Social darwinism

• Eugenics

• Measuring intelligence

• “Madness is from striving to be white in society

Person-fixing model:

• Naturally occurring biological and cognitive defects

• Inherent risk in need of control

Society fixing model

• Cultural oppression/injustice

  • Sexism, patriarchy

  • White supremacy

  • Ableism

• Fixing society factors

  • Climate change, war, income disparity, housing crisis

Theraputic response

1. Psychotherapy

2. CBT and DBT

   1. Developing skills to manage and identify triggers

3. Support groups