Topics Mind

Question Given that 'mental distress' will afflict at least one in seven of us, and as many as one in four (all according to contemporary extrapolations of evidence), and that the spectrum of analyses pertaining to 'mental health' is riven with contradictory perspectives, conceptual muddles, and what even a cursory examination would reveal as potentially harmful (to an individual) prescriptions, and the crossed borders of morality, scientific objectivity and 'spiritual' domains, why is there so little on a 'philosophy of mental health', and where should such a philosophy begin?

Accepted:
October 8, 2005

Comments

I believe there has been a fair bit of discussion of mental health in the so-called "continental" tradition. One classic in that tradition is Foucault's Madness and Civilization. You might also want to look into the work of R.D. Laing, for example, The Politics of Experience, and the early work of Thomas Szasz, such as The Myth of Mental Illness. These are pretty radical viewpoints, and I'm not saying I agree with them, but both Laing's work and Szasz's early work are worth reading.

There is a piece on mental illness in the Stanford Encyclopedia.

There's a link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy toward the bottom of the "Related Sites" list on the right.