Autumn Segner autumn segnerwsu edu Mentor Dr Jennifer

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Autumn Segner autumn. segner@wsu. edu Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Thigpen jthigpen@wsu. edu The Invisible Struggle

Autumn Segner autumn. segner@wsu. edu Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Thigpen jthigpen@wsu. edu The Invisible Struggle Understanding the Stigma of Mental Illness and its Roots The Stigma is Real Psychology has advanced a great deal during recent history, particularly in the past century. Yet despite new knowledge on the causes of mental illness, the stigma surrounding it still exists. Numerous studies have proven its resilience in modern times. Indeed: • In most countries, only around 10% of the health budget is used for mental health programs despite high rates of mental illness. 1 • A study found that 60% of mentally ill people reported that they had experienced some kind of rejection; 77% had seen harmful portrayals of the mentally ill in the media. 2 Why It Persists My research sought to discover the roots of this stigma, so as to understand why it is still prevalent. I focused on attitudes toward mental illness prior to the mid-twentieth century, when psychology began to bloom into the science it is today. I found three main historical contributors: • The early, universal beliefs that the mentally ill were possessed by supernatural forces • The institutionalization and subsequent lack of visibility of the ill • The common attribution of the mentally ill as “other” than human By Autumn Segner The Findings Where does this stigma come from? For millennia humans have believed that mental illness was the result of possession by supernatural forces: • Ancient skulls dating to 6500 BCE have holes suggesting the use of trephining to release evil spirits. 4 • Since the time before the Qur’an, Arabians thought that jinn (or demons) caused mental disorders. 5 • Until the Han dynasty, many Chinese thought illness in general was due to demons, ghosts, sins from past lives, fate, or imbalance in energy. 6 However, these beliefs likely lasted for many years among the common population, as they often relied on folk medicine. • The Greeks and Romans thought that it was the result of possession by a god or demons. Their beliefs are well -displayed in play The Bacchae by Euripides, where the mother of a king, Pentheus, kills her son due to the god Dionysus throwing her into a “frenzy. ” 7 • Early Christianity cited demons as the cause, and said that being unable to fight these demons made one morally weak; one biblical story describes Jesus expelling demons from a chained man, who afterwards was “in his right mind. ” 8 • Even science fell prey to these ideas; an early British psychiatrist named Henry Maudsley said that mental illness was punishment for breaking a “moral law. ” 9 With such deep roots in history, it is difficult to eradicate the ideas that people have held for centuries. It is unfortunately unsurprising that the stigma still exists. Yet if we can understand where the stigma came from and discredit these beliefs, it is my hope that we can dismantle it and work toward a more compassionate view of mental illness and the mentally ill. “…there is no such thing as a harmless lunatic. All lunatics are dangerous, and should be kept in confinement. The man who believes that there is such a thing as a harmless lunatic is laboring under a delusion himself. ” 3 – Dr. Forbes Winslow in the New York Times, 1895 Since the fourth and fifth centuries, human beings have employed a consistent strategy of dealing with the mentally ill: sequestering them in mental health institutions. This practice began in Byzantium and Jerusalem. European treatments often consisted of chaining up the ill and leaving them in their own waste, as well as beating and starving them. Bloodletting was also a common practice. Hospitals were placed near the center of states in the U. S. for convenience but were often so far from cities that hospitalization effectively operated as exile. 10 With the mentally ill hidden from view, public imagination ran wild, allowing fear to prosper. Overall, mental illness has been a source of shame for millennia, whether because it was assumed that it made them morally weak, dangerous, or inhuman. The stigma still exists, and to truly address and eradicate it, we must better understand its roots. Perhaps then we can begin to treat mental illness as it really is: an illness that is not the fault of the person and one that must be treated with patience and compassion. References 1. The Madman by Sir Charles Bell (1824), from “Sir Charles Bell, Essays on Expression. ” Wellcome Images, https: //wellcomeimages. org/. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only license CC BY 4. 0: http: //creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4. 0/. For years, people justified their treatment of the ill by saying that they were no better than beasts. Reason was cited as making one human, and seeing as the mentally ill were considered to have lost this, they were seen as subhuman. An anonymous person contributed to a newspaper called The World that madness brought “the mighty reasoners of the earth, below even the insects that crawl upon it. ” 11 Cutting the Stone by Hieronymous Bosch (1494), from Allison M. Foerschner, 2010. “The History of Mental Illness: From Skull Drills to Happy Pills. ” Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse 2 (09), http: //www. inquiriesjournal. com/a? id=283. Conclusion In 1867, Henry Maudsley described the mentally ill as: “’tainted persons’, ‘lepers’, ‘moral refuse’, ‘ten times more vicious and noxious, and infinitely less capable of improvement, than the savages of primitive barbarism’, and endowed with ‘special repulsive characters’. ” 12 Laura Davidson, “Mental Health Laws Would Diminish Stigma and Improve the Lives of Millions, ” The Guardian, April 26, 2016, accessed September 2, 2016, http: //ntserver 1. wsulibs. wsu. edu: 2052/lnacui 2 api/version 1/get. Doc. Cui? lni=5 JMH-GNJ 1 -F 0216512&csi=270944, 270077, 11059, 8411&hl=t&hv=t&h nsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true. 2. O. F. Wahl, “Mental Health Consumers' Experience of Stigma, ” Schizophrenia Bulletin 25, no. 3 (1999): 467478, accessed February 1, 2017, doi: 10. 1093/oxfordjournals. schbul. a 033394. 3. “Knows ‘Jack the Ripper’, ” New York Times, September 1, 1895, accessed October 11, 2016, http: //ntserver 1. wsulibs. wsu. edu: 2098/docvie w/95244163? accountid=14902. 4. Jenni Irving, “Trephination, ” Ancient History Encyclopedia, May 01, 2013, accessed March 9, 2017, http: //www. ancient. eu /Trephination/; Stephen P. Hinshaw, The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 56 5. Andrew Scull, Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 52 -53. 6. Ibid. , 40. 7. Quoted in Greg Eghigian, From Madness to Mental Health: Psychiatric Disorder and Its Treatment in Western Civilization (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 18 -30. 8. Ibid. , 37. 9. Scull, Madness in Civilization, 243. 10. Hinshaw, Mark of Shame, 59, 64, and 68. 11. Ibid. , 64 and 189. 12. Scull, Madness in Civilization, 265. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Jennifer Thigpen for mentoring me during my research and helping me improve as a student. Her kind support is the reason for this project. Printed by BCU. Bcu. vetmed. wsu. edu