E-Book Overview
This historical study of mental healthcare workers' efforts to educate the public challenges the supposition that public prejudice generates the stigma of mental illness. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book argues that psychiatrists, nurses and social workers generated representations of mental illness which reflected their professional aspirations, economic motivations and perceptions of the public. Sharing in the stigma of their patients, healthcare workers sought to enhance the prestige of their professions by focussing upon the ability of psychiatry to effectively treat acute cases of mental disturbance. As a consequence, healthcare workers inadvertently reinforced the stigma attached to serious and enduring mental distress. This book makes a major contribution to the history of mental healthcare, and critiques current campaigns which seek to end mental health discrimination for failing to address the political, economic and social factors which fuel discrimination. It will appeal to academics, students, healthcare practitioners and service users.
Vicky Long is Senior Lecturer in the History of Health and Healthcare at Glasgow Caledonian University
'It provides some unique perspectives that, if embraced by mental health professionals and campaigners today, could significantly improve the chance of destigmatizing the image of individuals with severe and long-term mental ill health.'
Verusca Calabria, Nottingham Trent University, H-Disability
'The strength of the book is the presentation of the plurality of discourses generated by different groups, both from within and outside the field of mental healthcare. It provides some unique perspectives that, if embraced by mental health professionals and campaigners today, could significantly improve the chance of destigmatizing the image of individuals with severe and long-term mental ill health.'
Verusca Calabria, Nottingham Trent University, H-Disability, May 2017
E-Book Content
Destigmatising mental illness? makes an important contribution to the history of mental healthcare and will interest students and historians of medicine as well as researchers and students working in mental health, medical humanities and disability studies. It will also be of value to service users, healthcare professionals and voluntary sector groups who want to know whether past lessons can inform current efforts to challenge the discrimination experienced by people who suffer from mental distress.
Vicky Long is Senior Lecturer in the History of Health and Healthcare at Glasgow Caledonian University
Cover image: West Riding Lunatic Asylum: man restrained by warders, 1869. Wellcome Library, London
ISBN 978-0-7190-8581-9
9 780719 085819 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
LONG
Drawing on extensive archival research, Vicky Long argues that the representations of mental illness conveyed by psychiatrists, nurses and social workers were by-products of professional aspirations, economic motivations and perceptions of the public, sensitive to shifting social and political currents. Sharing the stigma of their patients, many healthcare workers sought to enhance the prestige of psychiatry by emphasising its ability to cure acute and minor mental disorder. However, this strategy exacerbated the stigma attached to severe and enduring mental health problems. Indeed, healthcare workers occasionally fuelled the stereotype of the violent, chronically ill male patient in an attempt to protect their own interests. Long contends that current campaigns, which conflate diverse experiences under the label mental illness, risk trivialising the difficulties facing people who live with serious and enduring mental disturbance, and fail to address the political, economic and social factors which fuel discrimination.
Destigm