Mental Illness

Worldwide, approximately one in four adults has a mental illness. Mental illness is a major source of disability, affecting one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. These thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are considered abnormal, and the persons who experience them are often viewed as deviant. In the United States, the most common mental illnesses are anxiety (22%, at a 12-month prevalence rate) and major depressive disorders (6.7%, at a 12-month prevalence rate). Other forms of mental illness, which are less prevalent, but that are more often associated with dehumanizing stereotypes by the general public, include schizophrenia (1.1%, at a 12-month prevalence rate) and bipolar disorder (2.6%, at a 12-month prevalence rate).

Mental illness as deviant behavior can be traced back to prebiblical times. Persons with mental illness were believed to be under the control of evil spirits. Prior to the 18th century, Christians commonly believed that persons with mental illness were possessed by demons or were witches. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social views of persons with mental illness varied—with some believing that mental illness was a character flaw and others that it was a result of poor parenting. Current views of mental illness are consistent with a biological/medical model of disease.

What do you think when you pass a person on the street talking to himself or herself? Is this deviant behavior? Experts agree that symptoms of mental illness are context specific and socially determined. What is classified as abnormal/deviant behavior in one context may not be classified as such in another context. An example is auditory hallucinations. In a psychiatric setting, such an experience may be indicative of a mental illness caused by a disorder of the brain or mind; however, in other contexts such voices may be indicative of a religious experience. And in the example above, the person may simply be using a wireless mobile phone headset to engage in a conversation with his or her mother.

This entry on mental illness as a social deviance is divided into four sections. Three popular, but ideologically different, views on the etiology and consequences of mental illness are presented—(1) the social constructionist framework, (2) the labeling theory, and (3) the biological/disease model. The concluding section explores the consequences of mental illness.