MENTAL ILLNESS

Mental Illness

Mental Illness

The conception of mental illness, particularly in contemporary Western cultures, has overwhelmingly been influenced by the dicta of the psychiatric profession. The pronouncements of this group serve as the gold standard for describing what is and what is not mental illness. For the psychiatrist, “mental illness” refers to “a spectrum of syndromes that are classified by clusters of symptoms and behaviors considered clinically meaningful in terms of course, outcome, and response to treatment” (Bruce 1999:37). Arguably, the categorization of forms of mental illness most widely used in the world today takes the form of the American Psychiatric Association's ...