The History of Boredom

THE HISTORY OF BOREDOMwith everyday

LIFE

…and what happens when you decide to do something about it that highly annoys

others regularly.Raphael Racanti International

School of Psychology

The new mental health model of 1800-2012.

Progressive, isn’t it?

1801 2012

Moment of impact.

Launch clip 1.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5C_J0-hRDY&list=PLC9605AA9D797656E&index=1&feature=plpp_video

What is this place?The origin of mental health

The history of the mental health system was last compiled by Michel Foucault in 1964.

His focus is on how the thinking behind the categorization and coercive control of madness came into being.

Michel Foucault 1926 - 1984

LEPROSY 45BCE – 1656ACE

Leprosy is a disease caused by the bacteria mycobaterium leprae and mycobacterium lepromatosis.

Historically, high risk populations are people who are poor and a weak immune system.

(Sasaki 2001)

The Leprosy The Leprosy ParadigmParadigm

A few infected individuals survive with this disease in modern times. You can see what it looks like in the following slides.

India

China

Africa

The body begins to decay while the person is still living. Their mental and emotional functions are normal.

Leper = Isolation and Elimination

1200s-1600s: Lepers are ordered to wear special clothing and shipped into camps. States choose to declare lepers legally dead so they may seize their property and finances without legal concern.

1600: Lepers die out. 19,000 concentrated leper camps are left vacant in Europe.

1656: France creates a similar purpose for the empty space in the former camps.

The Hospital The Hospital ParadigmParadigm

Present Day

Belmont, MassachusettsMcLean’s Hospital of Harvard University

1656

Paris, FranceThe General Hospital

1. The Hospital system does not answer to the judicial system.

2. It accepts homeless people and mentally ill people equally.

3. It uses iron chains, rooms in isolation for one, no bedding or furniture

4. It encourages compliance by administering physical punishment and force (we saw a picture before).

The Hospital System

What is a mental hospital?

• By 1830, the leper tradition is formally transitioned to the hospital system all over Europe. Brains caught in crisis are now under the control of the new “modern medicine” of the time.

• A power structure is developed to both serve and deceive the mentally ill. Why? The explicitly stated goal is to eliminate their sense of self-”sovereignty” (Pinet, 1801). A self-empowered person cannot be controlled by the hospital system.

• Methodology of control is upon the physical body: • seclusion, isolation, restraint, and withholding of basic needs

(food and warmth).

Who is mad?Who is mad?

• By 1800, madness is divided into five categories:– Someone who thinks they are superior to everyone.– Someone who is raving, or in rage.– Someone who is in passions with or without delusions.– Someone who has too many incoherent ideas and conflicting

speeches with or without delusions.– Someone who is melancholic.

• Note there is not yet genetic, biological or pathological explanations for mental illness, such as epilepsy or diabetes.

Philippe Pinel’s ‘moral treatment’ (1801-Present)Philippe Pinel’s ‘moral treatment’ (1801-Present)

• Personally invested in the insane after a friend died from suicide. Separated insane from criminals in confinement and replaced shackles with strait-jackets.

• Pinel writes handbook on how to subdue people, describes how the tone with

which the supervisor is to approach and how each attendant grabs a limb of the body.

 • Describes cures involving forced isolation and “stripping of sovereignty” of the

individual by increase of punishments until patient complies hospital routines.

 • Advocates separating from family and relatives in order to

break old relationships of power between them

 • Hospital cures through permanent visibility, absolute authority, isolation, and the

mad witnessing the madness of others.

In the paper accompanying this presentation on Slideshare is an addendum containing a collection of patient testimony, officially approved by WHO, where patients of all backgrounds provide their own experiences.

The nurse: (on staff) http://www.youtube.com/user/Addydawn#p/a/u/1/uewutyPufNk

(on restraints) http://www.youtube.com/user/Addydawn#p/a/u/2/ZmmW6GKSb2o

The patient: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYyFWe47-V0

The 2008 New York incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8aSdqOa0LM&feature=related

The Inpatient The Inpatient ParadigmParadigm

The Legal Process

• Most countries in the world have adopted Pinel’s moral model and the General Hospital medical and confinement model.

• The intake process can be summarized as 1) public complaint, 2) official approval and 3) coercive compliance.

• Police are a huge part of the intake process for steps 1) and 2); they themselves request further training for ambiguous mental-health related aggression. Why have we made mental illness a criminal act?

2010:The United Nations World Health Organization currently acknowledges the problem of forced detainment for the mentally ill but has yet to reach a decision on whether the system’s confinement and medical coercion model constitutes human rights violations.

Stigma: its foundations and realism.

The simple truth may be that there is no such thing as crazy. Only that, in every lifetime, there is a time and place for everything.

MENTAL ILLNESS:

VIOLENCE AND

PREJUDICE

FACTS ON VIOLENCE FACTS ON STIGMA

Including verbal remarks, the mentally ill are about 55% more likely to be aggressive when measured against the rest of the population, but not toward strangers.

The group measured to hold the highest negative prejudice, social distance and mistrust against the mentally ill were psychiatrists.

There is no more likelihood of being attacked by the mentally ill than by a stranger.

In Canada, 80% of the public felt comfortable with someone in a wheelchair while only 46% felt comfortable around a person known to have a mental illness.

Alcohol, drugs and low socioeconomic status can eliminate most correlations of violence and mental illness when controlled.

In Israel, 40% replied that they would not want a person with mental illness living in their neighborhood; 88% said that they would not let a person with mental illness take their children to school; and 50% replied that they are willing to help a person with mental illness but are not willing to be his or her friend.

A schizophrenic is 2.5 times more likely to be attacked by someone else than to attack someone.

In Israel when participants were asked 64% agreed that persons with mental illness can work, 58% thought that they cannot work in a normal job.

Rita Hayworth, Schizophrenic

Marilyn Monroe,Depressive

Inserting a positive psychological viewpoint:Inserting a positive psychological viewpoint:

1. Growing-tip Statistics1. Growing-tip Statistics

This project proposes the comprehensive data collection of depressive, schizophrenic and bipolar people living independently and happily from the formal mental health system.

How can researchers find these people? What is it we will ask them?

Inserting a positive psychological viewpoint:Inserting a positive psychological viewpoint:2. Practical Idealism2. Practical Idealism

This project proposes the reallocation of currently available public funds to create psychiatric hospital environments and attitudes in accordance with the norms of Positive Psychology, including physical exercise, access to the outdoors and empathy-based treatment.

A Swedish, state-funded closed-psychiatric unit.

Inserting a positive psychological viewpoint:Inserting a positive psychological viewpoint:3. Alternatives3. Alternatives

A Soteria Project clone in Bern, Switzerland.

This project proposes the installation of initiatives like The Soteria Project:

Under the direction of Dr. Loren L. Mosher in San Francisco between 1971 and 1983, up to 90% of acute schizophrenic episodes were treated at a lower cost to the community without isolation, restraining, or medications (forced or voluntary). Moreover, two-year follow-up showed patients did not experience a remission episode compared to controls.

The project’s findings were replicated in Montgomery County, Maryland and Bern, Switzerland in the 2000’s.

If this is all true, why didn’t things change by now?

• We are still inside a leprosy-based conception of sequestration and treatment for mental illness (the General Hospital system and Pinel’s moral model).

• Change is risky and involves big players, such as national and local governments, pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Growth-minded capitalism does not press innovations in this population sector because those who experience it become dependent upon the system.

• By its nature, psychiatric units are intentionally barred from the realm of public knowledge. Our influences are mainly movies and television, who in turn reinforce the stigma, who in turn reinforce leprosy-based thought-systems.

What can I do? Action steps:

1. Watch Sean Blackwell’s youtube on an alternative viewing of psychosis and depression. Search youtube:bipolarorwakingup.

2. Apply this knowledge to your own community of friends and family. Volunteer or visit a mental hospital.

3. Join our Section 12 Project, an initiative to have rights read by personnel who are confining someone for signs of mental illness. Currently staff is not required to inform them of where they are going, nor that they have no rights or that they can be injected or strapped. Email:evemichal@gmail.com

4. Educate, inform and circulate truth!Educate, inform and circulate truth!