Midterm of Intro to Mental Health

Test Question #1

The four current theories of mental illness are the Social Stress Theory, Family Systems Theory, Labeling Theory, and the Social Learning Theory. On this page I am going to discuss the four theories.

The Social Stress Theory is basically whatever stresses you out are going to affect your mood and understanding of the world.  The social stress theory of mental illness complements psychology's focus on the individual by viewing abnormal behavior within the context of social and cultural force. (Page 59 paragraph 2 Sociology of Mental Illness) The people suffering from Mental illness according to the social stress theory basically accumulate the stress over time through a natural disaster, like Katrina, intention, like the concentration camps, and chronic such as family distress, or being simply a part of the everyday life of an individual. (Page 59 par 3 Sociology of Mental Illness) It is said that when the economy goes bad so dose the individuals people try to make the best of the situations and usually have to scrimp and save in order to make a day. People tend to go to soup kitchens more and try their best to remain healthy. When wartime occurs people that are either directly effected or are the military face PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD is associates with this theory because people have reoccurring dreams and other problems that make mental illness worse. These PTSD people wind up seeing the worst things that they say in wartime occur over and over again in their memories that can leak out and they have to deal with the consequences of what happened in order to survive.

Family Stress Theory is propose that the structures and rules of some families may cause a member of the family to act abnormally according to societies laws and bylaws thus making the individual act as though he was a deviant. (Page 64 paragraph 2 Sociology of Mental illness) Schizophrenia is an example. When a child is conflicted with mixed beliefs like "I love you, but do not touch me." The individual grows up with conflicting beliefs that it is okay to love but not okay to touch. The individual can gain a sense of insecurities that will leave that person with conflicting beliefs, and thus cause him to have resentment toward people.

The Labeling Theory view label as a device to scare people into thinking that they are ill with a deadly mental illness that is not curing able. Some also think that mental illness is simply social misbehavior. (Page 67 paragraph 1 Sociology of Mental Illness) Some like Thomas Szaz think that the ph\psychiatric theory rest upon unproven assumptions (page 67 paragraph 2 Sociology of Mental Illness) Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead both say that if that mental illness is based upon the individual and what the person thinks about him/her self. As teenagers we are thrown into a world that will judge us on not only our physical appearance but also that of our inner beauty. If we perceive our selves to be ugly and not worthy because of what people think about us we will never be able to grow and learn that our world and our the important part we play in the world. For many years I was told I was beautiful in the eyes of men, heck I still do. Since I listen to the men and not my friends I found that I was fallen deeper away from my social group and farther into a hole of taking better care of myself, and more in love with myself. This left me with the notion that I was high and mighty but once my friends deserted me I wound up hating my body and not caring what shape it was in. Now almost ten years later and weighing 290 lbs I consider my obese and not likeable. I have fallen into a deeper depression and cannot seem to get myself out of the situation. Now I label myself an obese woman that cannot fit into any woman size clothing and do not want to do anything about it. My family always says I am too fat, but they do not help because they are obese themselves sure a couple are thin but most of them are fat. The meals we have when we get together could sink an army.  Church dose not help because everyone is skinny and the only problem they see that I have is my smoking. They love me for who I am. My friends or so called friends now mostly the men I keep company with want to date me just for sex. I have really turned into someone I do not like and I hope that I can change all this by my efforts to become skinny.

The Social Learning Theory is a theory based upon how the person learns. Behaviorist does not differentiate the symptoms of mental illness. Dollard and Millar argues that mental illness is nothing more than asset of observable symptoms, thus the principles of social learning theory can be applied to abnormal as well as normal behavior. (Page 69 paragraph 1Sociology of Mental Illness) An example of this would be if an individual learns how to kill from watching fight movies and going to Karate and that person acts upon their instinct and kill someone they are acting because that is what they were taught.

The Psychoanalytic Theory is based on Sigmund Frauds proposal that the mind, the psyche, contains a three-part personality structure consisting of the id, ego, and super ego. The process of continuous interaction among these structures is an intrapychic phenomenon occurring below ht surface of the person in the subconscious mind. These three parts are the ID, EGO, and the Superego. (Page 71 paragraph 2 -4 Sociology of Mental Illness)

An example would be if a person were wary of the government because of his uptight dad.

Test question #2

Insanity and the law were discussed. What is the American Law Institute rule regarding the "insanity defense"? List and discuss with examples

The American Law Institute Rule regarding the "insanity defense" states that "a person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity to incarcerate the criminally (wrongfulness of his conduct) or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law." The ALI further modifies mental disease or defect with the caveat "the terms mental disease or defect" do not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct. (Page 29 paragraph 2 Sociology of Mental Illness) An example of this would be the shooting of Regan by John Hickley. John Hickley was proven to mentally unfit and went into a mental institution. His plea was that he had done this so that his sweetheart would learn to love him better. Another example would be John Manson who even though he was found criminally insane he went to jail and is still serving out his sentence. Another was the case of the guy that shot Kennedy he wound up pleading guilty of being criminally insane and was sentenced to the mental hospital. The criminally insane defense has loopholes because it is hard for the court councilor to find the person guilty of being criminally insane or not. This system dose not usually works well, but when it dose there is a bunch of people that the courts let slide through their system.

Test Question #3

The "Labeling Theory: The Societal Reaction Model" is

The Labeling Theory view label as a device to scare people into thinking that they are ill with a deadly mental illness that is not curing able. Some also think that mental illness is simply social misbehavior. (Page 67 paragraph 1 Sociology of Mental Illness) Some like Thomas Szaz think that the ph\psychiatric theory rest upon unproven assumptions (page 67 paragraph 2 Sociology of Mental Illness) Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead both say that if that mental illness is based upon the individual and what the person thinks about him/her self. As teenagers we are thrown into a world that will judge us on not only our physical appearance but also that of our inner beauty. If we perceive our selves to be ugly and not worthy because of what people think about us we will never be able to grow and learn that our world and our the important part we play in the world. For many years I was told I was beautiful in the eyes of men, heck I still do. Since I listen to the men and not my friends I found that I was fallen deeper away from my social group and farther into a hole of taking better care of myself, and more in love with myself. This left me with the notion that I was high and mighty but once my friends deserted me I wound up hating my body and not caring what shape it was in. Now almost ten years later and weighing 290 lbs I consider my obese and not likeable. I have fallen into a deeper depression and cannot seem to get myself out of the situation. Now I label myself an obese woman that cannot fit into any woman size clothing and do not want to do anything about it. My family always says I am too fat, but they do not help because they are obese themselves sure a couple are thin but most of them are fat. The meals we have when we get together could sink an army.  Church dose not help because everyone is skinny and the only problem they see that I have is my smoking. They love me for who I am. My friends or so called friends now mostly the men I keep company with want to date me just for sex. I have really turned into someone I do not like and I hope that I can change all this by my efforts to become skinny.

Test Question #5

Discuss the dimensions of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder including the symptoms, prevalence and environmental view.