Sociology in the context of social psychiatry

Cooper, Brian

doi:10.1111/j.1600-0447.1994.tb05912.x

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Two potent sources of confusion about the idea of mental illness exist in the public mind. First, mental illness has to be distinguished from other causes of social deviance also involving distress and abnormal behaviour [17]. Mental illness, eccentricity and badness are different in meaning.…”

Section: Concepts Of Mental Illness and Mental Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Need for Mental Health Promotion

Herrman

2001

Aust N Z J Psychiatry

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An understanding that mental illnesses are treatable can encourage early entry to care, improve outcomes and lessen the stigma and discrimination related to mental illness. In primary health care there is some evidence that preventive interventions with groups at high risk of depression can prevent episodes of ill health. However, mental health promotion involves another dimension. Better understanding of the nature of mental health and mental illness is the key to changing the priorities, policies and practices in education, law, social services, housing and health critical in turn to the conditions conducive to mental health.

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Section: Concepts Of Mental Illness and Mental Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Need for Mental Health Promotion

Herrman

2001

Aust N Z J Psychiatry

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“…8 Fears of reductionism abound from all quarters. 9,10 Yet, as sciences work towards discoveries of disease and pathology, at the same time there remains a deep suspicion of medicine, doctors, brain sciences, and the over-worked ‘medical model’. 11 The fears are partly to do with choice and power, in vulnerable and disempowered patients, and with concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, but also that reductionism may follow to render emotions, distress, human suffering and moral fractures as surface phenomena that are explained away as deriving from core pathologies of brain rather than mind; and thus, this line of reasoning gives rise to the suspicion that people will be treated inhumanely and their citizenship rights and entitlements may be violated.…”

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confidence: 99%

From the Editor's desk

Bhui¹

2016

Br J Psychiatry

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Ahead in mental sciences: cultural, environmental and social campaigns A new report in 2014 on health provision, the NHS Five Year Forward View, 1 conceived that health services should be a social movement, to improve the nation's health with appropriate emphasis on prevention, driven by the patient and public experience of quality and safety. One key recommendation was to rely less on expensive randomised trials that take a long time to complete, but rather consider commissioning following 'evaluation' of innovative interventions. This will permit more rapid testing of service models and the gathering of relevant evidence. The risk is that the general effectiveness of interventions remains in question; local implementation may show benefits, but without a comparator these benefits may be due to many other influences. The need for evidence of cost-effectiveness and less-expensive healthcare is a necessary condition of reform, as all countries face a growing elderly population, greater demands on health systems, and a shortage of skilled professionals. The Mental Health Taskforce report is now published to give a mental health-specific 5-year forward view; 58 recommendations are offered for government bodies, commissioners, providers, policy makers and regulatory bodies. 2 Distributed leadership, systems redesign and co-creation of local solutions for rapid implementation are proposed as drivers for change. These indeed are the tenets that lie at the very heart of social movements. The place of evidence is recognised: mental health-related research and researchers, the report advocates, should not be overlooked in funding formulae for higher education institutions; psychiatry, psychology and mental sciences must not be seen as lesser forms of research just because they encompass diverse spheres of science-from cells, genes and pharmacotherapy to social and cultural influences, and the impact of safe environments and aesthetics on mental health and wellbeing. Yet, in opposition to a social movement for healthcare, medicine and mental healthcare are making rapid and remarkable progress to identify interventions for prevention and treatment of illness in the biological sciences and neuroscience. In the international mental health research arena, remarkable insights from neuroscience have captured the imagination of research commissioners, universities and national research institutes fostering a measured excitement about the place of the brain sciences, biology and technology in solving the challenges of disease and illness. 3,4 Higher education institutes have seen similar innovations in developing neuroscience teaching. 5,6 However, there are limitations to the neuroscience idiom in health and social policy, and the parameters of a realistic return need some critical inspection. 7 The social life of the brain, or the way the brain enters our social lives in schools, society, and all walks of life, requires unpacking as many of the premises of neuroscience are uncritically accepted in the excited search for a real d...

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“…All of this said, as much as greater sophistication in research will further our understanding, we need not sit back and wait for this to accrue before advocating change at policy and service delivery levels. As Brian Cooper (Cooper, 1992) commented nearly 20 years ago in relation to the same issue: ‘the history of public-health epidemiology, from cholera to bronchial carcinoma, has repeatedly demonstrated that effective preventive measures can precede the full causal elucidation of a disease’ (p. 597).…”

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confidence: 99%