Mental Illness

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the history of mental illness from the earliest colonial times, when it was believed that mental illness was caused by the baby being born under a full moon or having slept in moonlight to the medical prognoses and classification of different disorders today. It discusses the attitudes and diagnoses of mental illness over the past couple of centuries and the development of treatment. It evaluates whether genetics or physical environmental damage are the sole cause of mental illness and how researchers now believe that nature and nurture work together and that causes of mental illness will never be boiled down to one gene or a set of genes.

From the Paper:

"The last decade of the 20th century brought an explosion of knowledge regarding the causes of mental illness. Improvements in ability to make images of the brain as well as genetic research coming out of the Human Genome Project are forcing mental health experts to take a fresh look at the causes of mental illness. This new information also has treatment implications. Where previously, all mental illness was viewed as faulty emotional and psychological development, evidence is now emerging that many forms of mental illness may have a strong genetic component. People with the genes for a mental illness might or might not develop it depending on what happened to them in their lives, so in this model, mental illness still is somewhat environmentally based, but the physical evidence for mental illness is mounting."

More papers on Mental Illness:

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• Term Paper # 125172 : "Mental Illness as a Social Construct"
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