Hinshaw about mental illness

According to Liz Ditz of I Speak of Dreams, Stephen Hinshaw gave the closing keynote speech at the Learning and the Brain conference in San Fransisco (CA , US). Professor Hinshaw, who chairs the Department of Psychology at the University of California—Berkeley and is an eminent psychologist with a list of accolades as long as my arm, spoke about his current book on the stigma associated with mental illness. Liz’s report starts as follows:

The closing keynote speech at the San Francisco Learning and the Brain conference was by Stephen P. Hinshaw on The Mark of Shame: Attitudes Toward Mental Illness (With Emphasis on Children). I thought it was excellent. You should read his memoir of his father’s life-long struggle with mental illness, The Years of Silence are Past: My Father’s Life with Bipolar Disorder. An interview is here; the Amazon link is here.

Liz goes on to discuss the connection between scientology and mental illness, a topic on which Professor Hinshaw apparently commented briefly. Her references are worth following (here’s a link to her post).

Meanwhile, I’m simply envious of her opportunity to hear his presentation. Stigma is a substantial problem in mental illness. Too often it prevents people from seeking treatment for themselves and, even worse (in my view), for their children. There is some shame associated with mental illness that is undeserved and mis-serving.

To be sure, some of the responsibility for children’s mental illness must be attributed to the environments in which they live, but that responsibility is not blame. We are, in my view, still haunted by the misbegotten intrapsychic perspectives about effects of such concepts as oral and anal development (whatever those are) on children’s later behavior. All that verbiage about “refrigerator mothers,” “repressed memories,” “denial,” and etc. are useless in helping us establish how environments contribute to problems. And they are more than useless—they are harmful because they deter us from addressing the real problems—in helping us to help individuals with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders.

Sorry. I was getting carried away. End of editorial…almost: Mayhaps these ideas should be cast in a bogus bowl, such as we have going on Teach Effectively now.

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