Chapter 10 Clinical psychology

Psychologists use diagnostic and standard manual file. This includes:

crazy people muttering on the streets as in schizophrenia.
down syndrome or autism.
An elderly person with dementia.
Somebody with depression so bad that they can’t get out of bed.
Somebody for social phobia who’s profoundly awkward around people.
Someone who’s a paranoid schizophrenic, maybe who meets the sort of ultimate stereotype of the mentally ill who might believe that his or her thoughts are being monitored by the CIA.

There are reasonably clear cases of what it’s like to have a mental illness. But they’re also difficult cases.

what do you deal with a successful criminal? Like Bernie Madoff who swindled people edited their life savings.
where do evil end and mental illness begin?
Is addiction a mental illness?
Where do illness end and free will begin? This isn’t just a philosophical problem, it’s an everyday problem.

How do we think about mental illness?

One ancient view was it’s due to demonic possession
Another view worth talking about is the labels of mental illness or what we do to people who deviate from us socially. It’s worth taking seriously because, in many countries, including what used to be the Soviet Union, dissidents, people who protested against the governments were put in insane asylums. As an example that comes closer to home, people with certain sexual desires, including homosexuality used to be counted as mentally ill by the psychological and psychiatric community. It was only in 1973 that being gay was no longer counted as a mental illness.
Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz in his book “The Myth of Mental Illness”

Mental illness is a myth. We call people sick mentally ill if they deviate from society, and the label of mental illness deprives them of responsibility and dismisses them.

There is a recent debate for instance over neuro diversity.

For instance, being mildly autistic isn’t an illness in any interesting sense, but more just diverse aspects of different ways of processing information in dealing with the world,
On the other hand, it’ll be pretty clear that these really are illnesses in a very real sense. They lead up to a lack of functioning. They’re often associated with brain damage or brain trauma or unusual neurochemistry.
Maybe most important with treatment, people become happier and more competent and better able to deal with the world.
The medical model of mental illness: you think in terms of symptoms and an underlying disorder that is ultimately treated.