A Confederacy of Dunces: mental illness in the life and work of John Kennedy Toole

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 467-469
Author(s):  
Abhijit Pal
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Paranoid Schizophrenia ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Societal Values ◽  
Mental Illness Attitudes ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Illness Attitudes ◽  
The Relationship

SummaryThis article examines the life and work of John Kennedy Toole, focusing on his 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Toole finished the novel in 1966 and, after failing to rework his manuscript to his editor's satisfaction, he shelved the project. Following this, he displayed symptoms typical of paranoid schizophrenia and he took his own life at the age of 31. In his novel, Toole parodies both psychoanalysis and the practice of psychiatry at the time, with a strong overlap with the emerging perspectives critical of psychiatry popularised by figures such as Szasz, Laing and Foucault. Toole's life and work have relevance for psychiatrists interested in the relationship between creativity and mental illness, attitudes towards psychiatry in the 1960s, and the interplay between societal values and judgements of mental health.

scholarly journals Changes in newspaper coverage of mental illness from 2008 to 2016 in England

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Anderson ◽  
E. J. Robinson ◽  
A.-M. Krooupa ◽  
C. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Market Demand ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Wald Tests ◽  
Mental Illness Attitudes ◽  
Illness Attitudes

Abstract Aims Since 2008 England's anti-stigma programme Time to Change has lobbied media outlets about stigmatising coverage and worked with them to promote accurate and non-stigmatising coverage. While this may have an impact on coverage and hence attitudes, it is also possible that coverage can change in response to improving attitudes, through the creation of a market demand for less stigmatising coverage. This study evaluates English newspaper coverage of mental health topics between 2008 and 2016. Method Articles covering mental health in 27 newspapers were retrieved using keyword searches on two randomly chosen days each month in 2008–2016, excluding 2012 and 2015 due to restricted resources. Content analysis used a structured coding framework. Univariate logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of each hypothesised element occurring in 2016 compared with 2008 and Wald tests to assess the overall statistical significance of the year variable as the predictor. Results The sample retrieved almost doubled between 2008 (n = 882) and 2016 (n = 1738). We found a significant increase in the proportion of anti-stigmatising articles (odds ratio (OR) 2.26 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.86–2.74)) and a significant decrease in stigmatising articles (OR 0.62 (95% CI 0.51–0.75)). Reports on all diagnoses except for schizophrenia were more often anti-stigmatising than stigmatising. Conclusions This is the first clear evidence of improvement in coverage since the start of Time to Change. However, coverage of schizophrenia may be less affected by this positive shift than that of other diagnoses. The increase in the level of coverage identified in 2016 requires further investigation, as it may also influence public conceptualisation of what constitutes mental illness, attitudes to mental illness in general and/or specific diagnoses. While most anti-stigma programmes are not diagnosis specific, we suggest their evaluation would benefit from a diagnosis specific approach to allow fuller interpretation of their effects. This could include media analysis driven by hypotheses based on diagnoses to ascertain whether variations by diagnosis over time occur both in the nature and in the proportion of coverage.

The Impact of Psychopathy on Treatment for Patients With Serious Mental Illness: Attitudes, Behavior, and Risk

2021 ◽  
Vol 89 (9) ◽  
pp. S249
Author(s):  
Nicholas Thomson ◽  
Salpi Kevorkian ◽  
Carla Galusha ◽  
Elizabeth Wheeler ◽  
Lindsay Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Illness Attitudes ◽  
Illness Attitudes ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals When does geography matter most? Age-specific geographical effects in the patterning of, and relationship between, mental wellbeing and mental illness.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth J Griffith ◽  
Kelvyn Jones
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Multilevel Modelling ◽  
Contextual Effects ◽  
Mental Wellbeing ◽  
Covariate Adjustment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Geographical Context

Mental illness and mental wellbeing are related but distinct constructs. Despite this, geographical enquiry often references the two as interchangeable indicators of mental health and assumes the relationship between the two is consistent across different geographical scales. Furthermore, the importance of geography in such research is commonly assumed to be static for all age groups, despite the large body of evidence demonstrating contextual effects in age-specific populations. We leverage simultaneous measurement of a mental illness and mental wellbeing metric from Understanding Society, a UK population-based survey, and employ bivariate, cross-classified multilevel modelling to characterise the relationship between geographical context and mental health. Results provide strong evidence for contextual effects for both responses before and after covariate adjustment, with weaker evidence for area-classification and PSU-level contextual effects for the GHQ-12 after covariate adjustment. Results support a two-continua model of mental health at the individual level, but indicates that consensual benefit may be achieved across both dimensions by intervening at household and regional levels. There is also some evidence of a greater contextual effects for mental wellbeing than for mental illness. Results highlight the potential of the household as a target for intervention design for consensual benefit across both constructs. Results highlight the increased importance of geographical context for older respondents across both responses. This research supports an area-based approach to improving both mental illness and mental wellbeing in older populations.

scholarly journals STAGE PERSONA, STAND-UP COMEDY AND MENTAL HEALTH: ‘PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE’

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
MATT HARGRAVE
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Depression And Anxiety ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the subject of stand-up and mental health through the prism of comic persona, generating new, non-diagnostic discourses around mental illness. The article focuses on British and Australian comedians whose material addresses conditions such as bipolar disorder (John Scott), depression and anxiety (Seymour Mace; Lauren Pattison; Felicity Ward), or feigns the staging of mental collapse (Stewart Lee). Based on the analysis of live events and one-on-one interviews, the essay considers the role that persona plays in mediating the relationship between the comedian and their material, arguing that shaping persona is key to developing practices framed within a poetics of vulnerability.

scholarly journals Aleksandr Karepin, the nephew of Fyodor Dostoevsky and the hero of his novels

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-160
Author(s):  
Maria A. Myakinchenko
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Healthy Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fyodor Dostoevsky ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

The article discusses aspects of the relationship between Fyodor Dostoevsky and his nephew Aleksandr Karepin as well as their reflection in the writer's work. The peculiarities of the nature and character of Aleksandr Karepin are briefly described; he was a very peculiar and not completely mentally healthy person, who served as the prototype for various, in fact, diametrically opposed in spiritual terms heroes – Pavel Trusotsky from “The Eternal Husband” and Prince Myshkin from the novel “The Idiot”. The article concludes that the use of different, sometimes opposite personality traits of the prototype when creating images of the heroes of the works was a feature of the creative method of Fyodor Dostoevsky. In addition, Aleksandr Karepin's mental illness and the oddities in his behaviour allowed the writer to think out in different ways and build not only the image of a hero with certain features of the prototype, but also the attitude of the world around him to this character, which in turn illustrates the diseases of society.

scholarly journals Association between recognition and help-seeking preferences and stigma towards people with mental illness

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Picco ◽  
E. Abdin ◽  
S. Pang ◽  
J. A. Vaingankar ◽  
A. Jeyagurunathan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Confidence Intervals ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Categorical Variables ◽  
Perceived Stigma ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
People With Mental Illness ◽  
The Relationship

Aims.The ability to recognise a mental illness has important implications as it can aid in timely and appropriate help-seeking, and ultimately improve outcomes for people with mental illness. This study aims to explore the association between recognition and help-seeking preferences and stigmatising attitudes, for alcohol abuse, dementia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia, using a vignette-based approach.Methods.This was a population-based, cross-sectional survey conducted among Singapore Residents (n = 3006) aged 18–65 years. All respondents were asked what they think is wrong with the person in the vignette and who they should seek help from. Respondents were also administered the Personal and Perceived sub scales of the Depression Stigma Scale and the Social Distance Scale. Weighted frequencies and percentages were calculated for categorical variables. A series of multiple logistic and linear regression models were performed separately by vignette to generate odd ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the relationship between help-seeking preference, and recognition and beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for the relationship between stigma and recognition.Results.Correct recognition was associated with less preference to seek help from family and friends for depression and schizophrenia. Recognition was also associated with increased odds of endorsing seeking help from a psychiatric hospital for dementia, depression and schizophrenia, while there was also an increased preference to seek help from a psychologist and psychiatrist for depression. Recognition was associated with less personal and perceived stigma for OCD and less personal stigma for schizophrenia, however, increased odds of social distancing for dementia.Conclusion.The ability to correctly recognise a mental illness was associated with less preference to seek help from informal sources, whilst increased preference to seek help from mental health professionals and services and less personal and perceived stigma. These findings re-emphasise the need to improve mental health literacy and reinforce the potential benefits recognition can have to individuals and the wider community in Singapore.

Investigating the Impact of Child Maltreatment Histories on Drug Court Outcomes

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 799-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley R. Zettler ◽  
Amaia Iratzoqui
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Child Maltreatment ◽  
Drug Court ◽  
Criminal Justice Policy ◽  
Type Of Failure ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Although child maltreatment, mental illness, and substance abuse are significantly correlated, only the relationship between mental illness and substance abuse has been documented as potentially affecting the implementation of criminal justice policy. The current study considers the influence of child maltreatment histories in addition to mental health and substance abuse issues in predicting the success of participants in a large drug court in the Southwestern United States. Results indicated that child maltreatment was not predictive of overall court failure. However, child maltreatment had an indirect effect on type of failure, through its effects on mental illness and substance abuse diagnoses. Implications for these findings within drug court and for general criminal justice policy are discussed.

Maternal mental illness and mother-child relations

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Foreman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Maternal Mental Illness ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mother Child Relations

Interest in the relationship between mother-child interactions and mental health has two sources: awareness of the importance of correct parenting in personal development; and the exploration of postnatal mental illness.

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