Bibliography

This page lists various academic sources on the subject of stigma and mental illness; a certain number of them require access to academic serach engines like JSTOR.

Anthropology and the Abnormal. Benedict, R. (1959).In M. Mead (Ed.), Anthropologist at Work; Writings of Ruth Benedict (pp. 262-284). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. (Original work published 1934)

Anthropology and the Abnormal makes the point that abnormal and normal are relative categories. What is normal varies from one culture to the next, and the deviant in one society may be praised in another. Ruth Benedict is one of the most important figures of early psycholoigcal anthropology; although certain aspects of her ideas are clearly contectualized by the early 20th century psychological theory of adjustment, this paper clearly still makes many good points.

Constructing Normality: A Discourse Analysis of the DSM-IV. Crowe, M. (2000).Journal of Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing, 7(1), 69-77. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2850.2000.00261.x

On the premise that normality is defined in opposition to normality, Crowe identifies four main categories of symptoms of psychopathologies - irrationality, immoderation, unproductvity, and the lack of a certain individualized self - in the DSM-IV; the opposite of these four then construct what we think of as normal, the moderate, rational, productive, self-confident but not conceited person. Crowe deals with language and power issues.

I am…,I have…I suffer from…: A Linguist Reflects on the Language of Illness and Disease. Fleischman, S. (1999, March 1). Journal of Medical Humanities, 20(1), 3-32.

Fleischman highlights how some of the differences that the linguistic description of an illness or a disease can impact how the disease is thought of and even how a person thinks of themselves. While she does not explicitly talk about bipolar disorder, the linguistic dichotomoy holds true for bipolars as well.

Culture, Illness, and Care: Clinical Lessons from Anthropologic and Cross-Cultural Research. Kleinman, A., Eisenberg, L., & Good, B. (1978).Annals of Internal Medicine, (88), 251-258.

The differences between disease and illness are discussed; further, the distinction between "healing" and illness and "treating" a disease is made; the fact that patients with a "healed illness" - usually by a folk doctor in a community setting who more or less has the same status as the patient report better treatment outcomes is stressed.

Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks At American Psychiatry. T. M. Luhrmann.(2001).New York: Vintage Books.

Here, Luhrmann examines the "culture of psychaitry" by exploring how psychaitrists are trained to diagnose and treat people. She pays particular attention to Cartesian dualism and notes that psychaitrists are clearly taught to view the mind and the brain as two seperate things: lectures on neurobiology, for instance, occur on difference days than lectures on psychotherapy.

Bipolar Expeditions. Emily Martin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Emily Martin dicusses bipolar disorder as a cultural phenomenon. She connects its manifestation with the American character - particulary in terms of mania and capitalism - as well as discusses the costs of being a deviant for the bipolar individual. This book is highly interesting.

"Self-Labeling Processes in Mental Illness: The Role of Emotional Deviance." Peggy Thoits. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, No. 2 (Sep., 1985), pp. 221-249.

Thoits makes a case for internalization of labels in mental illness. While mentally ill individuals are only stigamtized by others when they witness "mentally ill behavior", the individual himself is constantly aware of "mentally ill thoughts" and continues to label himself as mentally ill because of it even long after his deviant behavior ceases.

Rosenfeld discusses the detrimental effects of stigma on self-esteem and weighs it against the benefits of accepting psychiatric treatment for mental illness. Ultimately she concludes that it is better for a person to accept psychiatric treatment, but the effect of stigma on self-esteem should not be ignored or considered part of the individual's original mental illness.

This paper investigates the question of what leads to the rejection of mental illness; noting that this rejection is normally seen as behavior based, Link et al argue that it is label based. While the mentally ill behavior may cease, knoweledge of past hospitalizations or past behaviors can still lead to the stigmatization and rejection of others.

Link et al examine three ways of individual coping with stigma in this paper: keeping mental illness a secret, avoidance of situations that may cause rejection, and educating others about mental illness. They conclude that none of these three coping mechanisms creates any type of benefit or diminishes negative labeling effects. The authors then propose that mental illness stigma is not something which can be overcome by the individual because it is so deeply reinforced by society.

This article compares a survey about stima and public ideas of mental illness in 1950 with one they authors conducted in 1996. They find that the definition of mental illness today is a much broader one than in 1950; however, more people identify violence and dangerousness as a trait of the mentally ill now than they did then.

The authors investigate three ways of decreasing stigma: protest, education, and contact. They conclude that protest has no effect, while education and contact both have many positive benefits. Contact with a mentally ill person was seen to have the most benefit. I found this article especially interesting in light of Link's article, above.

The Discourse of Abnormal Behavior