Message-Id: <199811011503.KAA29765@graf.cc.emory.edu>
From: "David Michael Long" <dlong@fpm.eushc.org>
To: kjrobert@ucla.edu
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 10:03:38 -0400
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Subject: Re: Soc. of Mental Illness
CC: MedSoc@csf.colorado.edu, carboy@lamar.ColoState.EDU
In-reply-to: <199810312148.NAA11324@theta2.ben2.ucla.edu>
Hi Kathleen,

Will it be a undergraduate or graduate level course?  I think it 
would make a difference in suggestions for the main text, but some 
obvious (well, to me at least) and necessary readings would include 
Goffman's "Stigma" and "Asylums," Szasz's "The Myth of Mental 
Illness," RD Laing's work, and all the stuff on Labeling Theory as 
related to deviance.  I usually ask clients from a local community 
mental health center to come and address the class, most of them have 
designated "speaker" representatives.  There was a nice PBS 
documentary about four years back about the history of St. 
Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC (the massive federal 
psychiatric institute which served as the basis for both Goffman's 
"Asylums" and I think Kessey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest") and 
it also does a good job covering the deinstitutionalization movement 
in the US.  I don't know if there has been any similar BBC production 
on the history of Bethlehem Hospital in London (from which we get 
the word "bedlam")? 

Since you are at UCLA, there are a few articles on the interaction of 
the socially constructed definition of mental illness and cultural 
scripts, i.e., the underutilization of mental health serviuces among 
Southwest Latino populations as an aspect of a strong familial 
network and a deemphasis on medically labeling deviance.  For a 
graduate course I would definitely get into the psychiatric epi, 
especially the work of Dohrenwend and Dohrenwend (they had a nice 
article in Science back around 91 or 92).  There is also an excellent 
article comparing diagnosis of schizophrenia versus bipolar 
disorder between French and British psychiatrists based on 
the DSM and the same medical charts, and how the same symptoms would 
often result in a different diagnosis depending on the country.

Of course, while I would focus on chronic mental illnesses (e.g., 
schizophrenia, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, etc.) you 
mightb also want to cover topics that would inlcude addictions and 
learning disorders or even "diseases of the mind" such as Parkinsons, 
Alzheimers, and AIDS-related dementia.  Parts of the book "Listening 
To Prozac" nicely describe the concept of cosmetic 
psychopharmacology, i.e., the use of medications to achieve a 
psychiatric "spa effect" to enhance emotional and mental wellbeing 
amongst individuals with no identifiable deficits.

I'll try to track down some specific references, but I hope this 
helps.

Dave Long

> I will be teaching a Sociology of Mental Illness course for the first time
> this summer.  I would appreciate any suggestions list members may have
> regarding textbooks and supplemental readings.  What have you used
> successfully in your Soc. of Mental Illness courses?  Also, do you have any
> suggestions regarding "active learning" classroom assignments and/or
> activities that have worked well for this course?  Thanks in advance.  
> 
David M. Long, MPH
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
Emory University School of Medicine
69 Butler Street, SE
Atlanta, Georgia 30303-3219
404-616-2389 (voice)
404-616-6847 (fax)
dlong@fpm.eushc.org

"Man makes himself... Life is nothing until it is 
lived." - Jean-Paul Sartre 

"God can be shaped. God is Change." - Octavia Butler

"The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like 
a nightmare on the brain of the living." - Karl Marx

"Resist or serve." - D. Long