Beyond the layman's madness.

Date:
1976
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Credit

Beyond the layman's madness. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

About this work

Description

Based on the 14th Sir Geoffrey Vickers Lecture for the Mental Health Foundation, Professor Michael Shepherd talks about and attempts to define mental disorders currently affecting the population. He bases his lecture around three questions: what types of mental disorder do we encounter? How much illness is subsumed by these categories and where and how are the patients suffering from such disorders to be identified? He calls on much evidence from different studies attempting classification processes and points out the huge variance between them. Throughout, Shepherd questions whether or not it is possible for there to be a universally agreed categorisation system for mental health. 8 segments.

Publication/Creation

London : University of London Audio-Visual Centre, 1976.

Physical description

1 encoded moving image (39.09 min.) : sound, black and white.

Duration

00:39:09

Copyright note

University of London

Terms of use

Unrestricted
CC-BY-NC
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales

Language note

In English

Creator/production credits

Presented by Professor Michael Shepherd, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. Produced by Martin Hayden. Made for British Postgraduate Medical Federation. Made by University of London Audio-Visual Centre.

Notes

This video is one of around 310 titles, originally broadcast on Channel 7 of the ILEA closed-circuit television network, given to Wellcome Trust from the University of London Audio-Visual Centre shortly after it closed in the late 1980s. Although some of these programmes might now seem rather out-dated, they probably represent the largest and most diversified body of medical video produced in any British university at this time, and give a comprehensive and fascinating view of the state of medical and surgical research and practice in the 1970s and 1980s, thus constituting a contemporary medical-historical archive of great interest. The lectures mostly take place in a small and intimate studio setting and are often face-to-face. The lecturers use a wide variety of resources to illustrate their points, including film clips, slides, graphs, animated diagrams, charts and tables as well as 3-dimensional models and display boards with movable pieces. Some of the lecturers are telegenic while some are clearly less comfortable about being recorded; all are experts in their field and show great enthusiasm to share both the latest research and the historical context of their specialist areas.

Contents

Segment 1 Professor Shepherd talks to camera and explains the main questions his lecture on mental illness will include. He shows tables listing all the mental disorders included in the 8th edition of the International Classification of Diseases and he describes the main classes and sub-classes of these diseases. Time start: 00:00:00:00 Time end: 00:05:01:00 Length: 00:05:01:00
Segment 2 Shepherd shows further charts detailing the classification and prevalence of different forms of mental illness. He points out that data varies according to the institution publishing it and he discusses differences in classification in general. For instance, some institutions classify anorexia nervosa as a psychogenic disease, some as a psychosomatic illness and some as a psychosocial problem. Time start: 00:05:01:00 Time end: 00:09:39:00 Length: 00:04:38:00
Segment 3 Shepherd looks at the classification of mental illness from the 1960s, in particular the list of admissions. He compares these to the same kind of list from hospital admissions in 1949. Interestingly, in 1949, 50% of patients admitted were classified as suffering from alcoholic psychosis. Shepherd looks at how alcoholism has been classified as a form of mental illness since then and shows a chart detailing the kind of classifications for this in relation to the presence of liver disease. Time start: 00:09:39:00 Time end: 00:16:15:00 Length: 00:06:36:00
Segment 4 Shepherd moves on from looking at inpatient statistics to look at statistics relating to outpatients. He shows a table comparing the two - outpatients are mainly classified as having neuroses and personality disorders while inpatients have higher number of people suffering from psychosis. Time start: 00:16:15:00 Time end: 00:20:31:12 Length: 00:04:06:12
Segment 5 Shepherd suggests that the lack of consistent statistics from hospitals means that the dimensions of mental health within the community are not well covered. He shows how statistics for people seeking GP advice for mental health problems doubled between the years 1955 to 1971. The statistics show too, however, that some of the increase is due to increased tendency to diagnose certain ill-defined symptoms, such as chronic headache, in terms of mental illness. Time start: 00:20:31:12 Time end: 00:25:06:12 Length: 00:05:25:00
Segment 6 Shepherd shows a graph detailing how many cases of mental ill health make it into GP or other medical statistics. He then talks in general about the recognition of mental illness, listing the stages from initial discomfort in the patient to being classified by a healthcare professional. Time start: 00:25:06:12 Time end: 00:30:37:17 Length: 00:05:31:05
Segment 7 Shepherd talks about how classifications help in case identification, if nothing else. He describes how new systems suggested by the World Health Organisation have altered classification processes and shows a table listing some new types of classification. Shepherd also looks back at the 1943-1952 British Survey of Sickness and describes the statistics listed there. Time start: 00:30:37:17 Time end: 00:36:00:00 Length: 00:07:22:08
Segment 8 Shepherd talks about the US National Health Survey from the 1960s which was based on a sample of 8000 people aged between 18 and 79. He concludes his lecture by discussing how difficult it is to classify mental health illnesses and that more attention needs to be paid to people suffering within the community who have not yet been assessed by a healthcare professional. Time start: 00:36:00:00 Time end: 00:39:09:13 Length: 00:03:09:13

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