Social work is one of the core mental health professions. With a dominance of a biological model in psychiatry, the scope of social factors has been relatively marginal. Social factors have been argued to be social work ́s area of expertise. Psychiatric social work is challenged to articulate its unique knowledge and valuable contribution to the field of mental health care since they are coexisting with other more well-established professions. This qualitative study explores how psychiatric social workers and psychiatrists in Goa, India, perceive social work's unique knowledge and its contribution to the field of mental health care. It further explores psychiatric social workers understanding of social factors in relation to mental illness. The empirical material was collected through twelve semi-structured interviews with ten psychiatric social workers and two psychiatrists working in different mental health care settings in Goa. The results show that the main psychiatric social work contributions were described as raising awareness about mental illness and their functioning as a bridge between units. The result further shows a difficulty (among psychiatric social workers) to articulate psychiatric social work's unique knowledge, but during the interviews a specific in-depth knowledge emerged as well as a focus on psychiatric knowledge. Our findings showed that psychiatric social workers understood social factors in terms of social relations. The results are analyzed with Foucault's theory of discourse, Polanyi's theory of tacit knowledge and Ingleheart’s modernization theory.

This purpose of this dissertation was to examine the attitudes of retirees toward mental illness treatment. Secondary data from the Survey Research Center at the University of North Texas was utilized for this study. The focus was on the influence that gender, income, education, race/ethnicity, personal experience, fear, goodwill, and social control might have had on retirees' attitudes toward mental illness treatment. An n = 225 was selected out of the existing data to serve as the sample population. Binary logistic regression was utilized to analyze the data. Results indicated that the obtained significant findings were consistent with existing literature.

Thesis (M. A. (Psychology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / Several studies have shown that alternative health care practitioners play an important role in addressing the mental health care needs of individuals by offering culturally appropriate treatment. In South Africa, it has been suggested that indigenous healers are frequently consulted for mental illness when compared to their Western trained counterparts. The aim of the present study was to explore the conceptualization of mental illness by VhaVenda indigenous healers. Specifically, the study sought to achieve the following objectives: a). Establish what VhaVenda indigenous healers understand about mental illness; b). Determine the types of mental illness identified by VhaVenda indigenous healers; and, c). To determine what indigenous healers in this community perceive as the signs and symptoms of mental illness. A qualitative approach, and in particular, the case study method was used in the present study. Ten indigenous healers (male = 8: female = 2), aged between 35 and 60 were selected through snowball sampling and requested to participate in the study. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using the content analysis method. The following psychological themes emerged from the study: a). participants understanding of mental illness; b). causes of mental illness; c). types of mental illness; d). signs and symptoms of mental illness; e). diagnoses of mental illness and f). Treatment of mental illness. The findings revealed that there are multiple causalities of mental illness and were accounted for by African indigenous beliefs. The findings of the present study further suggested that the participants do not have an elaborate nosological system that distinguishes between the different types of mental illness. Instead of giving names to the illnesses, the participants tended to describe the illness based on what is perceived as the cause which emanate from cultural ideologies. Furthermore, the results revealed that indigenous healers use the following treatment modalities to treat mental illness: namely, the use of herbs and indigenous practices. The study is concluded by making a few recommendations, that among others include consideration been given to some form of collaboration between indigenous healers and western trained health care practitioners.

Stigma has been described as the most significant obstacle to quality of life for individuals with major psychiatric diagnoses (Sartorious, 1998). Much of the psychological literature on stigma focuses on individual attributes and interactions at the micro level, rather than macro level dynamics. In critiquing this traditional focus, Link and Phelan (2001) present a model in which stigma ensues when labeling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, and discrimination co-occur in a situation of power imbalance. Even as the model fills a gap in conceptualizing stigma, its emphasis on power is unidirectional and fails to account for power as a form of resistance to stigmatization. This study explores the question of how a consumer/survivor activist perspective can inform the Link and Phelan model of stigma. A semi-structured interview methodology was used to gather qualitative data on the perspectives of 10 activists who are both the targets of stigma and active change agents in resisting stigma. The content of the interviews was thematically analyzed based on an iterative coding approach in order to identify the points of overlap with and divergence from the Link and Phelan model. The results of the study support the applicability of the model for psychiatric stigma. The participants' experiences illustrate which aspects of stigmatization take precedence in this context, indicating significant points for intervention. The anti-stigma work discussed by the participants illustrates the power of grassroots resistance, expanding the understanding of power presented in the model. Emergent discursive themes include the importance of similarity, the rejection of negative portrayals of mental illness, and a focus on a shared continuum of human experience. Participants' emphasis on the importance of having their voices silenced was a particularly recurring motif. Several respondents challenge the premises of the Link and Phelan model. These participants emphasize the positive aspects of diagnosis and labeling, while several other participants reject the choice of the term stigma because it may obscure the structural aspects of discrimination. These findings can serve as a guideline for designing future interventions, and focusing on strategies for social change.

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This dissertation demonstrates how patients' mental illness treatment careers depend on the change and/or stability among differing levels of social structure. Theorists of the mental illness career tend to ignore the role that higher levels of social structural change have on individuals' mental illness career. Researchers using an organizational perspective tend to focus on the organizational environment but ignore the treatment process from the individual's point of view. Both perspectives neglect what the nation-state's broader socio-political and economic circumstances could imply for people seeking treatment for mental disorders. Organizational theory and theories of the mental illness career are independent theoretical streams that remain separate. This dissertation connects these independent theoretical streams by developing a unifying theoretical framework based on historical analysis. This historical analysis covers three phases of treatment beginning at the end of World War II to the present. This framework identifies mechanisms through which changes in larger levels of social structure can change the experience and career of mental patients. This new perspective challenges current conceptions of the mental illness career as static by accounting for the various levels of social structure that play a part in the mental illness treatment career. Taken together, the inclusion of differing levels of social structure and the subsequent reciprocal relationship between these levels of analysis produce a narrative that explains why and how stability and change within the mental health sector shape the mental illness treatment career. / Ph. D.

<p dir="ltr">My dissertation, “Locating Mental Illness Treatment Experiences in Indianapolis, 1945-1975” examines this therapeutic revolution in mental illness treatment at an important historical and geographic crossroads. As opposed to the current focus on de-institutionalization, I propose a new conceptual model of <i>re-institutionalization </i>to understand the multi-level experience in mental illness treatments during the transitional period. Re-institutionalization is a conceptual framework for locating the therapeutic revolution in mental illness treatment by layering the dramatic expansion of the places and modes of treatment within an embodied therapeutic landscape. The dynamic changes of the therapeutic landscape in Indianapolis stand as a metonym for systemic changes in which mental health care was integrated into medical health care not through the closing of institutions but through creation and redefinition. My findings demonstrate that re-institutionalization in Indianapolis was characterized by 1) the development of governmentally funded institutions to improve the treatment of the mentally ill, 2) the development of therapy in-patient, out-patient, and community mental hospitals and clinics, 3) the differentiation and professionalization of therapeutic modalities, 4) primacy of a clinician diagnosis of mental illness, 5) patient’s acceptance of therapeutic identity as mentally ill.</p><p dir="ltr">Indianapolis was both emblematic of the broader therapeutic revolution in mental illness treatment and specifically significant in the development of biopsychiatry. Indianapolis leaders embraced biopsychiatry as a pragmatic path between the psychodynamic focus on unconscious desires and neuropsychiatric focus on structural and electrical models of the nervous system. Indianapolis was the home of pathbreaking neurotransmitter research at Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, Indiana University Medical Center, and the National Institute for Mental Health-funded laboratories at the Institute of Psychiatric Research. Strong legislative, philanthropic, hospital, and university leadership shaped Indiana’s plans with surprisingly little connection to the federal government’s mental health initiatives.</p>