Analysis Of Mental Illness And American Society By Gerald Grob

MADNESS OR MENTAL HEALTH ARTICLE ANALYSIS Language is defined as a method of human communication which can be spoken verbally or nonverbally by symbols, signs, or written by hand. Language is a tool that we use to spread knowledge amongst ourselves as well as obtain knowledge from others. Madness and mental illness are words that society uses very loosely even though the majority of the population don’t fully understand the context behind those words. What really is madness? When is it appropriate to diagnose someone as being mentally ill? These are questions that have been asked numerous times throughout history. There has been numerous theories on what madness really is and how to categorize the word. No one really knows what madness really

He wrote his book, Mental Illness and American Society, in 1983. In his book, he argued that the psychiatric definition of mental illness is not fundamentally different from the definition of disease (pp. 35-36). Grob has stated that we know very little about what is classified as mental illness and this is one of the reasons why it is difficult to prove or disprove its existence. Gerald Grob believed that severe and persistent mental disorders require a judicious mix of medical and social support programs (Grob 1998, p. 213). Personal views and firsthand experiences had a tremendous impact on Grob’s influence and understandings (1983, p. xii). Grob wrote about his experience working with severely and chronically mentally ill patients at Worcester State Hospital. Grob states “with severely and chronically ill patients led me to reject many social control and deviance theories and reflexive anti-psychiatric thinking” (Grob 1994a, p.

Language is a very powerful thing. With so many different definitions and views of what mental illness really is, it is almost impossible to be on the same page. Thousands of volumes have been written over the centuries about the true definition of madness. Roy Porter stated that our current definitions of madness is the same as the definitions used in the sixteenth century. It is also important how we categorize mental illness. Humans categorize almost everything because that is how we make sense of things and doing that has been a god strategy in order to survive. Categorizing is something we use to simplify things so it can be better or more easily understood. Categorizing is useful but at the same time it can do more harm than it helps. This is something that society has struggled with when it comes to mental illness. Any unusual or scary behavior that is presented is automatically thrown into the mentally ill category by the majority of society. If no obvious answer is found to explain the unorthodox behavior, most people automatically place the person who committed those actions as mentally ill. This is the issue we have as far as mental health is concerned. We must change the language so we can be on the same page in order to fully understand what mental health really is and how to diagnose