Sociology of Mental Illness 01:920:307:01 Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:15 p.m. 3:35 p.m. Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook & Douglass Campus. Instructor: Hwa Yen Huang Email: hhuang@sociology.rutgers.edu (please put Soc Mental Illness in the subject line) Office: Davison Hall, Room 19 Office Hours: Tuesdays 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., and by appointment Course Description This course is an introduction to the sociology of mental illness. Through this course, we will learn to: (1) Locate the particular ways in which a collectivity defines and manages mentally ill experiences and behaviors (2) Use a collectivity s definitions and treatments of particular mental illnesses as lenses to that very collectivity (3) Appreciate the conflicts that are created by different definitions and treatments of mental illnesses. The first part of the course focuses on some influential sociological theories of mental illness. We will look at two major ways in which mental illnesses emerge in social life. First, we look at how mental illnesses are mediated by interaction between mental health practitioners, would be patients, and patients. Second, we look at how mental illnesses may be normal aspects of living in problematic socio cultural structures. The second part of the course focuses on how people do mental illness in different sociocultural contexts. The final part examines critical trends regarding the definition and treatment of mental illness in contemporary US. Readings There are no required textbooks for this course. All readings will be posted on the Sakai course website under Resources. If you do not have access to the website, let me know right away. I expect you to come to class prepared, and ready to engage in discussions. Grades: Your grade for this course will be based on three mid term exams. The first mid term exam will be worth 30% of your final grade, while the second and the third mid term exams will each be worth 35% of your final grade. Mid term exams will consist of multiple choice questions. Exam material will not be cumulative.
Grades will be computed using the following distribution: A = 90 100; B+ = 85 89; B = 80 84; C+ = 75 79; C = 70 74; D = 60 69; F 59 Make up Exams Make up exams will only be allowed under extraordinary circumstances. If you know beforehand that you will not be able to take the exam on the scheduled time, you need my written permission granted ahead of time. If you have an emergency on the day of the exam, you need to notify me as soon as possible and provide documentation. Make up exams will consist of four to five short essay questions. Academic Integrity Cheating, plagiarism, or any other kind of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. It will result in a failing grade and a referral to the Dean of Students. The University Policy on Academic Integrity is at http://wp.rutgers.edu/courses/201/plagiarism_policy/ Classroom Decorum The Department of Sociology encourages the free exchange of ideas in a safe, supportive, and productive classroom environment. To facilitate such an environment, students and faculty must act with mutual respect and common courtesy. Thus, behavior that distracts students and faculty is not acceptable. Such behavior includes cell phone use, surfing the internet, checking email, text messaging, listening to music, reading newspapers, leaving and returning, leaving early without permission, discourteous remarks, etc. Courteous and lawful expression of disagreement with the ideas of the instructor or fellow students is, of course, permitted, and encouraged. If a student engages in disruptive behavior, the instructor, following the University Code of Student Conduct, may direct the student to leave class for the remainder of the class period. Serious verbal assaults, harassment, or defamation of the instructor or other students can lead to university disciplinary proceedings. The University Code of Student Conduct is at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~polcomp/judaff/ucsc.shtml. A Note on Cell Phones: Please refrain from text messaging during class. If you have an emergency that requires you to communicate via text or phone, please go out in the hallway to do so. If I see you texting during class, I will ask you to leave for the day, as this behavior is distracting to me and disruptive to your peers.
Schedule (This schedule is subject to change. Changes, if necessary, will be announced in advance during class and on the Sakai course website) Tuesday 1/20: Introduction Thursday 1/22: The Modern Paradigm Parsons, Talcott. 1951. Illness and the Role of the Physician: A Sociological Perspective. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 21 (3): 452 460. Mental Illness as Social Deviance Tuesday 1/27: Definition Scheff, Thomas. 1974. The Labeling Theory of Mental Illness. American Sociological Review 39 (3): 444 452. Thursday 1/29: Institutionalization Goffman, Erving. 1957. Asylums. Selections. Rosehan, David. 1973. On Being Sane in Insane Places. Science 179: 250 258. Tuesday 2/3: Medicalization Szasz, Thomas. 1960. The Myth of Mental Illness. American Psychologist 15: 113 118. Conrad, Peter. 1975. The Discovery of Hyperkinesis: Notes on the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior. Social Problems 23: 12 21. Social Structure and Mental Illness Thursday 2/5: Economic Inequality Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Selections. Merton, Robert.1948. Social Structure and Anomie. American Journal of Sociology 3: 672 682. Tuesday 2/10: Social Exclusion Dubois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Selections. Seidman, Steven. In The Closet. Thursday 2/12: Uncertainty Durkheim, Emile. Anomic Suicide. Beck, Ulrich. 2006. Living in the World Risk Society. Economy and Society 35 (3): 329 345.
Tuesday 2/17: Review Thursday 2/19: Mid term Exam 1 Experience and Mental Illness Tuesday 2/24: Reason and Its Other Elias. The Civilizing Process. Selections. Foucault. Madness and Civilization. Selections. Thursday 2/26: Substance Use Becker, Howard. 1953. Becoming a Marihuana User. The American Journal of Sociology 59 (3): 235 242. Tuesday 3/3: Hallucination Luhrmann, Tanya. How Do You Learn to Know that It Is God Who Speaks? Thursday 3/5: Somatization Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman. 1994. How Bodies Remember: Social Memory and Bodily Experience of Criticism, Resistance, and Delegitimation following China s Cultural Revolution. New Literary History 25 (3): 707 723. Cultural Translation and Mental Illness Tuesday 3/10: Depressive Moods Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1985. Depression, Buddhism, and the Work of Culture in Sri Lanka in A. Kleinman and B. Good (eds.), Culture and Depression: 134 152. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thursday 3/12: Overwork Suicide Kitanaka, Junko. 2008. Diagnosing Suicide of Resolve: Psychiatric Practice in Contemporary Japan. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 32: 152 176. Tuesday 3/17: SPRING BREAK Thursday 3/19: SPRING BREAK Tuesday 3/24: Ong, Aihwa. 1988. The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 15 (1): 28 42.
Thursday 3/26: Review Tuesday 3/31: Mid term Exam 2 Mental Illness in Contemporary US Thursday 4/2: De Institutionalization Grob, Gerald. 1991. From Hospital to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America. Psychiatric Quarterly 62 (3): 187 212 Tuesday 4/7: Diagnostics Horwitz, Allan. 2011. Creating an Age of Depression: The Social Construction and the Consequences of the Major Depression Diagnosis. Society and Mental Health 1: 41 54. Thursday 4/9: Psychopharmacology Kramer, Peter. Listening to Prozac. Chapter 1. Tuesday 4/14: Trauma Young, Allan. 1996. Suffering and the Origins of Traumatic Memory. Daedalus 125: 245 260. Thursday 4/16: Victimhood Loseke, Donileen. 1987. Lived Realities and the Construction of Social Problems: The Case of Wife Abuse. Symbolic Interaction 10 (2): 229 243. Tuesday 4/21: Punishment Sykes, Gresham. The Pains of Imprisonment. Rhodes, Lorna. 2012. Psychopathology and the Face of Control in Supermax. Ethnography 3: 442 466. Thursday 4/23: Living With(out) Mental Illness Howard, Jenna. 2006. Expecting and Accepting: The Temporal Ambiguity of Recovery Identities. Social Psychology Quarterly 69 (4): 307 321. Tuesday 4/28: Review Thursday 4/30: Mid term Exam 3