Evolution and Stigma of Mental Health

Mental health: we can all peer into the looking glass and be reflective on a time that our mental health was not in an optimal state. However, in society, even today, there is still quite a stigma in regards to what mental health is and how to treat it. These theories and opinions ebb and flow and often when you account for the zeitgeist of a particular era, the attitudes and beliefs that are prominent are quite logical in terms of explanatory power. In the mid 1800’s to the early 1930’s, the Freudian psychodynamic theory of mental health was favoured; this involved a more qualitative approach, and many of Freud’s theories revolved around case studies in which his patients were experiencing hysteria or conflict in the conscious and subconscious mind. Freud believed that talking therapy could uncover the subconscious and could resolve any mental dissonance that was

“Shell shock” was a well known neuropsychiatric disorder present in the war, which at first was assumed to be the result of the vicitim’s close proximity to the explosion of shells (6). However, when the labelling of “shell shock” was replaced with “combat fatigue” the severity of previous presentations were minimised, and the suggestiveness of the title ‘fatigue’ meant that the soldiers believed that they would be able to return to combat after rest (7).To illustrate the salient points in the fragility of evidence in the biological approach to mental health further, Dr. Insel, Former Director of NIMH asserts that the DSM’s ‘the english dictionary of mental disorders’ strength is in its reliability that all clinicians diagnose using the same rubric. However its main, and probably most fundamental weakness is its lack of validity, as the symptom based diagnoses focus on the nature of the evidence and not the subjective reality of each individual