Health to survey the mental health needs of the nation and to recommend new approaches. Based on the commission’s recommendations, legislation was passed in 1963 authorizing funds for construction of facilities for community-based treatment centers. A similar group, the President’s
Commission on Mental Health, reported its findings in 1978, citing estimates of the cost of mental illness in the U.S. alone as being about
$17 billion a year.
Scope of the Problem
According to a common estimate, at any one time 10 percent of the American population has mental health problems sufficiently serious to warrant care; recent evidence suggests that this figure may be closer to 15 percent. Not all the people who need help receive it, however; in 1975 only 3 percent of the American population received mental health service. One major reason for this is that people still fear the stigma attached to mental illness and hence often fail to report it or to seek help.
Analysis of the figures on mental illness shows that schizophrenia afflicts an estimated 2 million Americans, another 2 million suffer from profound depressive disorders, and 1 million have organic psychoses or other permanently disabling mental conditions. As much as 25 percent of the population is estimated to suffer from mild or moderate depression, anxiety, and other types of emotional problems. Some 10 million Americans have problems related to alcohol abuse, and millions more are thought to abuse drugs. Some 5 to 15 percent of children between the ages of 3 and 15 are the victims of persistent mental health problems, and at least 2 million are thought to have severe learning disabilities that can seriously impair their mental health.
In addition, according to the President’s Commission, the list of mental health problems should be extended beyond identifiable psychiatric conditions to include the damage to mental health associated with unrelenting poverty, unemployment, and discrimination on the basis of race, sex, class, age, and mental or physical handicaps.
Prevention
Public health authorities customarily distinguish among three forms of prevention. Primary prevention refers to attempts to prevent the occurrence of mental disorder, as well as to promote positive mental health. Secondary prevention is the early detection and treatment of a disorder, and tertiary prevention refers to rehabilitative efforts that are directed at preventing complications.
Two avenues of approach to the prevention of mental illness in adults were suggested by the President’s Commission. One was to reduce the stressful effects of such crises as unemployment, retirement, bereavement, and marital disruption; the second was to create environments in which people can achieve their full potential. The commission placed its heaviest emphasis, however, on helping children. It recommended the following steps:
1) good care during pregnancy and childbirth, so that early treatment can be instituted as needed;
2) early detection and correction of problems of physical, emotional, and intellectual development;
3) developmental day-care programs focusing on emotional and intellectual development;
4) support services for families, directed at preventing unnecessary and inappropriate foster care or other out-of-home placements for children.
Treatment
Care of the mentally ill has changed dramatically in recent decades. Drugs
introduced in the mid-1950s, along with other improved treatment methods,
enabled many patients who would once have spent years in mental
institutions to be treated as outpatients in community facilities instead.
(A series of judicial decisions and legislative acts has promoted community
care by requiring that patients be treated in the least restrictive setting
available.) Between 1955 and 1980 the number of people in state mental
hospitals declined from more than 550,000 to fewer than 125,000. This trend
was due partly to improved community care and partly to the cost of
operating hospitals; in an effort to save public money, some large state
mental hospitals have been closed, forcing alternatives to be found for
patients. This is generally considered a progressive trend because when
patients spend extended periods in hospitals they tend to become overly
dependent and lose interest in taking care of themselves. In addition,
because the hospitals are often located long distances from the patients’
homes, families and friends can visit only infrequently, and the patients’
roles at home and at work are likely to be taken over by others.
The psychiatric wards of community general hospitals have assumed some of the responsibility for caring for the mentally ill during the acute phases of illness. Some of these hospitals function as the inpatient service for community mental health centers. Typically, patients remain for a few days or weeks until their symptoms have subsided, and they usually are given some form of psychotropic drug to help relieve their symptoms. Following the lead of Great Britain, American mental hospitals now also give some patients complete freedom of buildings and grounds and, in some instances, freedom to visit nearby communities. This move is based on the conclusion that disturbed behavior is often the result of restraint rather than of illness.
Treatment of patients with less severe mental disorders has also changed markedly in recent decades. Previously, patients with mild depression, anxiety disorders, and other neurotic conditions were treated individually with psychotherapy. Although this form of treatment is still widely used, alternative approaches are now available. In some instances, a group of patients meets to work through problems with the assistance of a therapist; in other cases, families are treated as a unit. Another form of treatment that has proven especially effective in alleviating phobic disorders is behavior therapy, which focuses on changing overt behavior rather than the underlying causes of a disorder. As in the serious mental illnesses, the treatment of milder forms of anxiety and depression has been furthered by the introduction of new drugs that help alleviate symptoms.
Rehabilitation
The release of large numbers of patients from state mental hospitals, however, has caused significant problems both for the patients and for the communities that become their new homes. Adequate community services often are unavailable to former mental patients, a large percentage of whom live in nursing homes and other facilities that are not equipped to meet their needs. Most of these patients have been diagnosed as having schizophrenia, and only 15 to 40 percent of schizophrenics who live in the community achieve an average level of adjustment. Those who do receive care typically visit a clinic at periodic intervals for brief counseling and drug monitoring.
In addition to such outpatient clinics, rehabilitation services include sheltered workshops, day-treatment programs, and social clubs. Sheltered workshops provide vocational guidance and an opportunity to brush up on an old skill or learn a new one. In day-treatment programs, patients return home at night and on weekends; during weekdays, the programs offer a range of rehabilitative services, such as vocational training, group activities, and help in the practical problems of living. Ex-patient social clubs provide social contacts, group activities, and an opportunity for patients to develop self-confidence in normal situations.
Another important rehabilitative facility is the halfway house for patients whose families are not willing or able to accept them after discharge. It serves as a temporary residence for ex-patients who are ready to form outside community ties. A variant is the use of subsidized apartments for recently discharged psychiatric patients.
Research
Many different sciences contribute to knowledge about mental health and illness. In recent decades these sciences have begun to clarify basic biological, psychological, and social processes, and they have refined the application of such knowledge to mental health problems.
Some of the most promising leads have come from biological research. For example, brain scientists who study neurotransmitters—chemicals that carry messages from one nerve cell to another—are contributing to knowledge of normal and abnormal brain functioning, and they may eventually discover better treatment methods for mental illness. Other researchers are trying to discover how the brain develops—they have learned, for example, that even in adults some nerve cells partially regenerate after being damaged—and such research adds to the understanding of mental retardation, untreatable forms of brain damage, and other conditions.
Psychological research relevant to mental health includes the study of perception, information processing, thinking, language, motivation, emotion, abilities, attitudes, personality, and social behavior. For example, researchers are studying stress and how to cope with it. One application of this type of research may help to prevent mental disorders; in the future, psychologists may be better able to match people (and their coping skills) to work settings and job duties.
Research in the social sciences focuses on problems of individuals in contexts such as the family, neighborhood, and work setting, as well as the culture at large. One example of such work is epidemiological research, which is the study of the occurrence of disease patterns, including mental illness, in a society.
11. Forensic psychology and criminology
The study of abnormal behaviour often leads to special investigations into the origins or causes of crime. This in turn will lead to the psychological study of criminals and also of the victims of crime. The literature on this topic is growing and there exist now a number of useful indexing services to help with the retrieval of particular contributions from many countries. While most of these indexes and abstracts are orientated towards the work of, and happenings in, the courts, all of them contain, references to the behaviour of criminals or social deviants. Criminology and penology abstracts has been in existence since 1960; its abstracts are arranged under broad subject heading which include psychology, psychopathology, psychiatry, social behaviour of groups.
12. Psychology, religion and phenomenology
The long traditional links between religions and psychology go back to classical antiquity. They received much impetus in the middle ages and again during the many periods of religious and political fervour that stirred Europe during the past six centuries, reaching various climactic peaks through seers, visionaries and martyrs. Every one of these advocated social reforms on earth to attain a new heaven, or threatened new hells should the reforms not be adopted. All were persecuted by the established religious or political power, or both; then as now, the defenders of the status quo almost invariably accused the challengers of being madmen or psychopaths. It is all a matter of firmly held beliefs uttered from pulpits,chancery ballconies and soap boxes as well as printed in broadsides, pamphlets, or large books, or smeared on the walls of houses with a wide brush
13. Parapsychology
Psychical Research, also parapsychology, scientific investigation of alleged phenomena and events that appear to be unaccounted for by conventional physical, biological, or psychological theories.
Parapsychologists study two kinds of so-called psi phenomena: extrasensory perception (ESP), or the acquiring of information through nonsensory means; and psychokinesis (PK), or the ability to affect objects at a distance by means other than known physical forces.
Psychical research also investigates the survival of personality after death and deals with related topics such as trance mediumship, hauntings, apparitions, poltergeists (involuntary PK), and out-of-body experiences. The name of this field of investigation is taken from the
Society of Psychical Research, founded in England in 1882 and in the
U.S. in 1884; both groups continue to publish their findings today.
Historical Development
Among the early achievements of the British group was the investigation of
hypnotism, a field later claimed by medicine and psychology. The society
also investigated phenomena produced at spiritualistic seances and the
claims of spiritualism. Psi phenomena to be investigated were classified as
either physical or mental. The physical effects, or PK, include the
movement of physical objects or an influence upon material processes by the
apparent direct action of mind over matter. The mental manifestations, or
ESP, include telepathy, which is the direct transmission of messages,
emotions, or other subjective states from one person to another without the
use of any sensory channel of communication; clairvoyance, meaning direct
responses to a physical object or event without any sensory contact; and
precognition, or a noninferential response to a future event.
One of the first specific investigations in the field was the examination,
by the British chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes, of the phenomena
produced at seances held by the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Home,
a physical medium, held his seances in full light, and the validity of the
paranormal phenomena he produced has never been successfully impugned. The
contents of verbal utterances by mental mediums were also studied.
Significant early research involved the American medium Leonore E. Piper,
whose apparent psychical gifts were discovered by the American philosopher
and psychologist William James. Other lines of investigation dealt with
psychic experiences that seemed to occur spontaneously in everyday life,
and involved the controlled testing of persons with apparently outstanding
ESP abilities.
Rhine’s Laboratory
In the U.S., one of the earliest groups to become active in parapsychology was the Parapsychology Laboratory of North Carolina’s Duke University, which began publishing literature in the 1930s. There, under the direction of the American psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine, methods were developed that advanced psychical investigations from the correlations of isolated and often vague anecdotal reports to a mathematical study based on statistics and the laws of probability.
In the experiments dealing with ESP, Rhine and his associates used mainly a
deck of 25 cards, somewhat similar to ordinary playing cards but bearing on
their faces only five designs: star, circle, cross, square, and wavy lines.
If a subject correctly named 5 out of the shuffled deck of 25 concealed
cards, that was considered pure chance. Certain subjects, however,
consistently named 6 out of 10 cards correctly; so Rhine and his associates
concluded that this demonstrated the existence of ESP. In their experiments
on PK, the group used ordinary dice that were thrown from a cup against a
wall or tumbled in mechanically driven cages. In these tests, an apparent
relationship was found between the mental effort of subjects to “will”
particular faces of the dice to appear upward and the percentage of times
the faces actually did so. The results obtained in many individual
experiments and in the research as a whole, Rhine and his workers decided,
could not reasonably be attributed to the fluctuations of chance.
Rhine retired from Duke University in 1965 and transferred his research to
a privately endowed organization, the Foundation for Research on the Nature
of Man. Since that time parapsychology has become better established in
other universities, as illustrated by the offering of credit courses in the
subject in increasing numbers. In addition, independent research centers
continue to be founded, among them the American Society for Psychical
Research, with headquarters in New York City. The Parapsychological
Association, an international group of scholars actively working in the
field, was formed in 1957 and was granted affiliation status by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1969.
Criticisms
Although parapsychologists are increasingly employing and refining scientific methodologies for their observations, one of the chief criticisms of their work is that experiments in psi phenomena can rarely be duplicated. Under the most rigorous laboratory controls, for example, experiments on phenomena such as out-of-body experiences—in which individuals demonstrate an apparent ability to locate their center of perception outside their bodies—indicate that even reputable psychics are rarely able to duplicate earlier, high-scoring performances. The scores of such individuals, in fact, tend to drop to the level of probability the more the experiment is repeated. Nonparapsychologists find psi experiments even more difficult to repeat, and a majority of conventional scientists dismiss parapsychology findings as unscientific or at best inconclusive.
A similar criticism is based on the claim by most parapsychologists that
psi phenomena occur beyond the law of causality, which is one of the
fundamental premises of any scientific investigation. Indeed, results of
psi experiments often turn out to be far from or even contradictory to the
original predictions. Parapsychologists admit that psi phenomena fall so
far outside ordinary comprehension that they are often unsure whether an
ESP event or a PK event has occurred; Rhine himself stated that one kind of
event could not occur without the other. Because these phenomena are
difficult to define or isolate when they appear to happen—and, further,
because the phenomena occur only for a select group of observers—most
scientists think that psi investigations fall far short of the rules of
objectivity required by the scientific method. As a result, many
parapsychologists, rather than trying to demonstrate the reality of psi
phenomena to a skeptical scientific community, have turned to exploring how
such phenomena might actually work; they even have drawn on quantum physics
for empirical support. Some workers in the field object to the very notion
of repeatability of experiments as foreign to the nature of psi phenomena;
they consider the scientific method, as currently understood, too
restrictive a formulation for exploring the unknown.
14. Industrial Psychology
Psychologists in industry serve many roles. In the personnel office, they assist in hiring through testing and interviewing, in developing training programs, in evaluating employees, and in maintaining good employee relations and communications. Some psychologists do research for marketing and advertising departments. Others work in the field of human engineering, which involves designing machines and workplaces to make them more suitable for people.
School Psychology
Psychologists in the educational system give most of their attention to counseling and guidance. They help students plan their school and work careers. Educational psychologists deal with the processes of teaching and learning; for example, they may investigate new methods of teaching children how to read or to do mathematics, in order to make classroom learning more effective.
Clinical Psychology
Many applied psychologists work in hospitals, clinics, and private practice, providing therapy to people who need psychological help. By testing and interviewing, they classify their patients and engage in all forms of treatment that are not exclusively medical, such as drug therapy and surgery.
A special contribution of clinical psychology is behavior therapy, which is based on principles of learning and conditioning. Through behavior therapy, clinical psychologists try to change the behavior of the patient and to remove unpleasant or undesirable symptoms by arranging the proper conditioning experiences or the proper rewards for desired behavior. A patient with a phobia about dogs, for example, might be “desensitized” by a series of rewards given for closer and closer contact with dogs in nonthreatening situations. In other forms of therapy, the psychologist may try to help patients better understand their problems and find new ways of dealing with them.
Vocabulary
Contents
Physiological psychology - психофизиология. Изучает психику в единстве с ее
нейрофизиологическим субстратом - рассматривает соотношение мозга и психики.
Psychoanalysis - психоанализ. Основывается на идее о том, что поведение определяется не
только и не столько сознанием, сколько бессознательным.
Behaviourism - бихевиоризм. Направление в американской психологии ХХ в., отрицающее
сознание как предмет научного исследования и сводящее психику к различным формам
поведения, понятого как совокупность организма на стимулы внешней среды.
Gestalt psychology - гештальт-психология. Программа изучения психики с точки зрения
целостных структур - гештальтов, первичным по отношению к своим компонентам.
Cognition - когнитивная психология. Исходит из того, что любая ассоциация между стимулом и
реакцией создается сначала в мозге.
Tests and Measurements - тесты
Development psychology - возрастная психология. Отрасль психологии,
изучающая закономерности этапов психического развития и формирования
личности в связи с возрастом - на протяжении онтогенеза человека от
рождения до старости
Social psychology - социальная психология. Изучает психологические особенности и
закономерности поведения и деятельности людей, обусловленные их включением в группы
социальные и существованием в них, а также психологические характеристики самих этих
групп.
Psychiatry and mental health - психиатрия и психическое здоровье. Область клинической
медицины, изучающая психические болезни
Forensic psychology - судебная психология. Область психологии юридической, изучающая круг
вопросов, относящихся к судопроизводству.
Сriminology - криминология.
Рhenomenology - феноменология.
Parapsychology- парапсихология (психотроника). Именование гипотез и
представлений, относящихся к психическим явлениям, объяснение коих не имеет
строгого научного обоснования.
Industrial Psychology - индустриальная психология.
2. Physiological psychology
Perception - восприятие
Certain skills - определенные навыки
Innate - врожденный
Perception - восприятие
Nervous system - нервная система
Circulatory system - гормональная регуляция
Central nervous system - центральная нервная система
Spinal cord - спинной мозг
Peripheral nervous system - периферическая нервная система
Glands- железа
Muscles - мышца
Sensory - чувствительный
Neuron - нейрон
Somatic system - соматическая система
Autonomic system - вегетативная система
Sympathetic division - симпатический отдел
Parasympathetic division - парасимпатический отдел
Knee-jerk reflex - рефлекс коленный (пателлярный)
3. Psychoanalysis
Unconscious - бессознательное
Conscious - сознательное
Latent dream - тайные (латентные) мысли
Manifest dream - явные мысли
Instinctual drives - основные инстинкты
Infantile sexuality - инфантильная сексуальность
Adult sexuality - взрослая сексуальность
Oral, anal and genital zones - оральная, анальная и фаллическая стадии
Oedipal period - эдипов комплекс
Структурные компоненты души:
Id - Ид (оно) “содержит все унаследованное, все, что есть при рождении. Ид
резервуар энергии для всей личности, содержание Ид бессознательно
Ego - эго - та часть психического аппарата, которая находится в контакте с внешней реальностью. Развивается из Ид по мере того, как ребенок начинает осознавать свою личность. Эго защищает Ид.
Superego - суперэго. Развивается и Эго. Служит судьей или цензором Эго.
Thinking - мышление
Motor control - моторные контроль
Defense mechanisms - защитные механизмы
Repression - подавление
Projection - проекция
Reaction formation - реактивные образование. Явная и обычно бессознательная
инверсия желания
Anxiety - тревожность
Analytical psychology - аналитическая психология
Libido - либидо - половое влечение
Personal unconscious - личное бессознательное
Collective unconscious - коллективное бессознательное
Archetypes - архетипы. Психические структуры, формы без собственного
содержания, которые организуют и канализируют психологический материал.
Persona - персона. Это то, какими мы представляем себя миру
Neurosis - невроз
Primary trauma of birth - первичная травма детства
Mental, emotional and sensory powers - ментальная, эмоциональная и чувственная сила
Situation neuroses - ситуационный невроз
Character neuroses - невротик
Complex unconscious fantasies in children - комплекс бессознательных фантазий в детстве
Death instinct - инстинкт смерти. Под ним понимаются присущие индивиду - как правило,
бессознательные - тенденции к саморазрушению и возврату в неорганическое состояние.
Depressive position - депрессивное состояние
Paranoid position - параноидальное состояние
7. Gestalt psychology
Associationism - ассоциативная психология
8. Cognition psychology
Attention - внимание
Perception - восприятие
Memory - память
Reasoning - мотивация
Judgment - суждение
Imagining - воображение
Thinking - мышление
Speech - речь
Psycholinguistics - психолингвистика. Научная дисциплина, изучающая
обусловленность процессов речи и ее восприятия структурой соответствующего
языка, или языка вообще.
Intelligence - интеллект
7. Tests and Measurements
Achievement tests - тест достижений
Aptitude tests - тест на профпригодность
Intellegence tests - тест умственных способностей
Verbal abilities - способности на восприятие вербального (знакового)
материала
Infant intelligence tests - тесты на определение уровня интеллекта детей
Interest inventories - опросники профориентации
Objective Personality tests - объективные качества личности
Social extroversion or depression - социальные экстроверсия и интроверсия
Personality types - психотипы
Projective techniques - Проективные тесты
Validity - валидность. Указывает, что именно тест измеряет и насколько
хорошо он это делает.
Criterion-related validity - критериально-связывающая валидность
Construct validity - конструктивная валидность
9. Social psychology
Emotions - эмоции
Desires - желания
Social Affiliation - социальная аффилиация (стремление быть в обществе
других людей)
Influence - влияние
10. Psychiatry and mental health
Patterns - образ жизни
Depressive disorders - депрессия
Organic psychoses - органический психоз. Глубокие расстройства психики,
психической деятельности; проявляются в нарушении отражения реального мира,
возможности его познания, изменении поведения и отношения к окружающему.
13. Parapsychology
Extrasensory perception (ESP) - экстрасенсорное восприятие
Psychokinesis (PK) - психокинез
Trance mediumship, hauntings, poltergeists (involuntary PK) - трансовый
медиумизм, телепатия, полтергейст
Out-of-body experience - опыт вне телесного сознания
Hypnotism - гипноз (техника воздействия на индивида путем фокализации его
внимания с целью сузить поле сознания и подчинить его влиянию,, контролю
внешнего агента - гипнотизера, внушения коего гипнотизируемый будет
выполнять.
LITERATURE
1. Borchardt D.H. How to find out in Psychology. Pergamon Press 1984
2. Stedman`s concise Medical dictionary. First Webster`s New World Edition
1987.
3. Encarta Encyclopedia.1996
4. Никошкова Е.В. Англо-русский словарь по психологии. М: РУССО, ИП РАН,
1998
5. Ривкин В.Л., Морозов Н.В. Русско-английский медицинский словарь- справочник с толкованиями. М: РУССО, 1996
6. Словарь практического психолога. Минск: Харвест, 1998
7. Хрестоматия по психологии личности. Самара: Издательский Дом “Бахрах”,
1996
