HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
ABNORMALITY: LECTURE OUTLINE
• Historical perspectives
• Lessons learned from historical analysis
• The development of mental health services in
Canada
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
• Ancient societies – focus on supernatural
causes, harsh treatments
• Greek and Roman – focus on natural
causes, humane treatment
• Europe in the middle ages – mostly
focused on supernatural causes,
witchcraft, demonology, Malleus
Maleficarum, development of asylums in
the 1500s, mostly harsh treatments
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Moral treatment (1st mental health
revolution) – 1790s, Pinel, Tuke, Rush,
focus on natural causes and humane
treatment
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Dorthea Dix and the rise of the medical
model – mid to late 1800s, Kraeplin,
advances in medicine, germ theory, Social
Darwinism, institutionalization
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
• Mental hygiene movement – early 1900s,
Meyer, Beers, James, Hincks, focus on
humane treatment
• Psychoanalysis (2nd mental health
revolution) – Charcot, Breuer, Freud, focus
on psychological factors and treatments
• Community mental health (3rd mental
health revolution) – beginning in the 1960s,
deinstitutionalization, development of
community-based programs
LESSONS LEARNED FROM HISTORICAL
ANALYSIS
• The early history of psychopathology
reveals a struggle between supernatural
and naturalistic explanations and between
harsh and humane treatments
• After the middle ages, naturalistic
approaches based on scientific methods
became dominant
LESSONS LEARNED FROM HISTORICAL
ANALYSIS
• Whereas religious healers formerly
provided “treatment,” this has become the
domain of mental health professionals in
the 20th century
• Psychiatry and medicine have come to
dominate mental health services, but
clinical psychology has emerged in the
past 30 years
LESSONS LEARNED FROM HISTORICAL
ANALYSIS
• There has been a recurring pattern of
expose and reform with regard to
inhumane conditions for people with
mental illness
• Views of etiology and treatment vary with
social conditions
• There is a widening scope of experiences
that are considered to be mental health
problems
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH
SERVICES IN CANADA
• Late 1600s – asylums in Quebec
• Mid to late 1800s – Dorthea Dix and the
rise of the medical model and asylums in
eastern Canada
• Early 1900s – mental hygiene movement –
Hincks, CMHA, growth of psychoanalysis
• 1940s – mental hospitals, medical
superintendents, psychiatry
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH
SERVICES IN CANADA
• 1950s and 1960s – institutions, abuses,
somatic “treatments”; Saskatchewan plan;
Tyhurst (1963) report; shift to general
hospitals
• 1970s and 1980s – emergence of clinical
psychology training programs; beginning
of community mental health programs
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH
SERVICES IN CANADA
• 1990s to today – establishment of clinical
psychology across Canada (including 1st
Canadian textbook on abnormal
psychology); both hospital and community
mental health services subjected to
government cutbacks in funding; in 2000,
funding for phases I and II of mental health
homelessness initiative in Ontario
SUMMARY
• Abnormality and mental illness are
problematic concepts because of values
and social context
• Martin Luther King Jr. proposed that
psychology should form a “centre for
creative maladjustment”
SUMMARY
• Remember that mental illness is not
something absolute and unchangeable, but
a concept that is constructed in a social
context
• Stigma and discrimination towards
people experiencing mental health
problems have existed throughout history
• Need to dream of a better world for
people with mental illness