Essay: Domestic (U.S.) Issue
By: Chloé Reiss
Deviance/Lower Class Communities: Mental illness
A major domestic issue common in the United States is the crisis of Mental illness. Mental illness is a major form of social deviance present in all classes of American society, but those affected greatest tend to end up exiled from their previous normative social units in which they end up lingering among the lower classes of society. One way to recognize and acknowledge this major form of deviance is by looking at where, why, and to whom the crisis of mental illness affects.
The term mental illness/disorder refers to a psychological or physiological pattern that occurs in an individual and is usually associated with distress or disability to function in the expected social norms of a culture, this causing the mentally ill often to end up among the lowest classes of society. Classifications of disorders may vary, but the categories may include anxiety disorders, developmental disorders, eating disorders, psychotic disorders, personality disorders, and many other categories. In many cases there is no single accepted or consistent cause of mental disorders and victims often suffer from more then one disorder. Mental health services may be based in hospitals or in the community. Psychotherapy and psychiatric medication are two major treatment options, but treatment may be involuntary depending on the case. Often times we see patients go in and out of treatment their whole lives.
Anyone can get a mental illness due to the alteration of brain chemistry through internal and/or external factors. One common opinion is that disorders often result from genetic vulnerabilities combining with environmental stressors. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between whether or not a child becomes depressed because they inherited their mother’s depressive gene or because the depression of the mother laps over into environment of the child. Social influences also determine the degree of the mental disorder. Effectively, the lower class produces many mentally unhealthy people due to things such as poverty, malnutrition, broken home environments, the stress of gangs and drugs, etc.
Mental illness affects the lives of countless people across the U.S., including the individual mentally ill, the family/social unit that that person belongs/ed, and also the taxpayers who provide care. The issue could be analyzed through the conflict theory based on the idea that “social structure fails to promote the society as a whole, as evidenced by existing social patterns benefiting some people while depriving others”(Parillo,11). With the repercussions of deinstitutionalization and the lack in which society embraces the sick, the deviance of the mentally sick is still a great travesty. As a result, countless homeless people and people in prisons suffer from some form of a mental health illness because of, (some say inevitable), loopholes in the system. When the sick accept treatment, many times the patient will stop taking their medicine, the medicine will make them feel worse, or simply they will not return for treatment. Still today, drugs are administered constantly in order to monitor levels of rage, confusion, depression, etc. When a patient attends a hospital seeking help and has a bad episode, they are injected like the click of a switch to become sedated or happy, whichever mood is required to bring stability to the their condition. This does not really help the patient, but rather helps the people around that patient to deal with that situation for that moment in time. It is sometimes obvious that the long-term health of a patient is not the real concern of those doctors whose immediate concern is getting through the hour, day, or week, due to the amount of patients direly needing help. In the cases of those who do get better, there is a high chance of relapsing without the consonant support of others. Those who do not have the support, (i.e. their family couldn’t take it any longer and disowned them, or they have no family/friends), are forced to stray further from help and end up victims living in the lower class. This type of mentally ill live day to day, fighting the endless bouts of highs and lows that come with their tormenting illness, and often driving them to wonder the underbellies of society, drifting from city to city or jail to jail.
The solution to this issue has been deinstitutionalization, which has been in effect since the 50’s and 60’s, but has led to today’s epidemic of the never ending cycle of what I call “in and out care” that many of those diagnosed endure. “In and out care” by no means implies care by a dedicated institution or person, but rather the mentally ill’s “bump in” encounters with hospitals, jails, asylums, and half way homes.
Mental illness is one major form of deviance common in lower class American communities due to the fact that those affected greatest tend to end up exiled from their normative social units in which they end up among the lower class.
Source:
Parrillo, V. (2008). Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations (3ed). Pearsons Education, Inc.
