Beliefs and theories about mental illness vary greatly in the eyes of professionals. Many see mental illness as a serious condition, while others take it less seriously and see it as part of everyday life. Although many think that doctors are always right, they underestimate the influence and power they wield based on their personal opinions and ideas. Illustrating the article Social class, ethnicity and mental illness, Ann Vander Stoep and Bruce Link try to show whether there is a relationship between ethnicity-related mental illness and people from different backgrounds. In contrast, there is the view of Elaine Schowalter who is skeptical of doctors who diagnose mental illnesses and in her essay, Defining Hysteria, where she describes her disbelief and doubts related to hysteria. As a result, contradictory beliefs have led people to receive misdiagnoses, and the mentally ill have suffered these negative consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayStoep and Link clearly show that personal biases can lead to tainted findings and responses that impact mental health services policies. Because Jarvis was a credentialed physician with over fifty years of experience, people were inclined to believe his data and theories about mental illness based on social class and ethnicity. Edward Jarvis was one of the first physicians in America to practice psychiatry and apply statistical methods to the study of health and social problems (1396). He had the credentials and education that helped him persuade others. Jarvis' long career and status made it even easier for him to manipulate his data according to his beliefs. Jarvis had both the numbers and the methodology to test his hypotheses, but he didn't. The conclusions he drew from his investigation played an influential role in shaping public policies on mental health across the nation (1397). This shows how Jarvis' personal beliefs were able to alter the truth. Jarvis wasn't the only one guilty of this. A well-known doctor/scientist, Samuel George Morton, also had his own prejudiced ideas. His beliefs reflected the relationship between race and cranial capacity which was believed to mirror intellectual capacity. Even more recently, Dorothy Lewis supports her views regarding adolescents. His personal opinion was that young people confined in penitentiaries tended to be more violent than those housed in psychiatric hospitals. Like Jarvis, Morton and Lewis also let their personal beliefs undermine their ability to conduct impartial research. Polluted perceptions about mental illness are clearly displayed throughout Stoep and Links' article. Jarvis' distorted beliefs were harmful to our society then and now, as patients went untreated. Stoep and Link state: Perhaps his agrarian, Protestant, and middle-class New World values ​​had blinded Jarvis, an erudite scientist, to the facts contained in his carefully collected data (1402). His power and personal values ​​contaminated the outcome of his research and experiments. In the nineteenth century, research and information on mental illness as an illness was limited; in fact, many, including doctors, misunderstood this: the definitions of mental health states used by Jarvis are less clear. Psychiatric nosological categories of the time included insane lunatics and feeble-minded idiots. In secular and medical literature madmen were described as melancholic, manic, or simply mad (1397). Thepeople were quite confused about mental illness and it was referred to and labeled by many different names. Interestingly, Jarvis's conclusions tended to gain credibility for the simple reason that he was educated and had over fifty years of experience, including a high status in the field of mental illness.illness. His background got the better of him. Just some of Jarvis's accomplishments noted by Stoep and Link include that Jarvis was the founder of American psychiatric epidemiology and was his notable study of the prevalence of mental disorders in 19th-century Massachusetts (1396). He was well educated and had the necessary knowledge to perform such research. He was also commissioned by the Massachusetts state legislature to undertake a thorough census that included the identification of all insane and feeble-minded persons within the state (1396-97). Obviously this gave him more recognition and credibility in the eyes of the public. Since the people were willing to accept his statements, he told them what they wanted to hear and they were accused. Jarvis disliked the Irish and thought they were crazy, also leading him to manipulate his data accordingly. His prestige and respect paved the way for people not to doubt his research and statistics. Jarvis was a Protestant, instilled with agrarian values ​​and came from a middle class background, which I assume altered his thinking towards the Irish. In a sense, his judgment was somewhat impaired, making it difficult for him to do a proper analysis. On the basis of his crude findings, and without actually carrying out analyzes stratified by social class, Jarvis stated: There are a great number of foreign madmen in the state, in the hospitals, and in the public places (1397). He distorted his data to fit his theory of mental illness. Jarvis refers to the foreign-born as the strangers who dwell among us (1397). He even seems to look at them as if they were some kind of alien. Elaine Schowalter questions the concept of mental illness and argues that it is not as bad as people think it is. He believes it is a natural part of life and behavior that almost everyone experiences. It seems to her that perhaps this is not the case when there is not even a single answer to explain the mental illness, - lameness, paralysis, seizures, cough, headache, speech disorders, depression, insomnia, fatigue, eating disorders - the doctors they despair of finding a single diagnosis (14). Showalter believes hysteria is overdiagnosed and poorly defined. Factors involving modern hysteria include anorexia and bulimia, two illnesses that have grown and become more prevalent over the years. These diseases were recognized around 1870, but not much attention was paid to them because they were not as common then. In 1983, when Jane Fonda revealed her problems with bulimia, girls who may not have known about vomiting as a form of weight control were exposed to the information. A decade later they were able to learn about bulimia through the tribulations of Princess Diana (21). The disease became more apparent and accepted when people saw celebrities and models engaging in this type of behavior. As a result of all this attention, anorexia became an epidemic. In the 1990s, some researchers recognized that the publicity given to anorexia and bulimia was creating a secondary wave of patients and that men were also developing eating disorders (22). Once recognized, these two diseases spread as if they were contagious, becoming widespread and well known. Another factor was mass hysteria, which includedwitchcraft and witch hunts to relieve paranoia. Witch hunts, Brian Levak wrote, became one of the ways people could maintain their balance in a time of great stress (24). People used witch hunts as a scapegoat to restore balance. Mixed with old prophecies, Cohn wrote, paranoia became a coherent social myth, capable of completely taking over those who believed in it. It explained their suffering, promised them a reward, kept their anxieties at bay, gave them an illusion of security, even as it pushed them, kept them united by a common enthusiasm, in a vain and often suicidal search (25). ). Witch hunts were used as a scapegoat to support sanity. Due to inconsistent data and varying definitions, Schowalter remains skeptical. The ever-changing definitions have created doubt in many minds, particularly that of Elaine Schowalter: hysteria is not a single, coherent, unified affliction like malaria or tuberculosis (14). Due to inconsistent data, mental illness is difficult to understand. Hysteria has changed throughout history as to what actually causes it. At first it had to do with the body influencing the mind, then it changed. Now, it is said that behavior creates the disease that people can see. Symptoms and behavior varied between doctors and eras. Schowalter states that a French doctor, Charles Lasegue, stated that the definition of hysteria has never been given and never will be (14). Apparently, Schowalter isn't the only one who's skeptical. She calls it a wastebasket diagnosis (16), meaning that a doctor will make a diagnosis if necessary. As doctors make these diagnoses, Schowalter believes they see it as an opportunity to take credit for the label. It is considered an opportunity to achieve fame in his eyes. These women tended to enter their physicians' lives at intellectually formative moments in physicians' careers and often served as clinical models—founding cases—of physicians' theoretical work. Doctors needed hysterical women as muses; hysterical women needed doctors to speak for them (19). Women were used as scapegoats; they were the victims who had been given a diagnosis to explain the hysteria. Schowalter states that women's bodies were hysterized, that is, transformed into a collection of physical and psychological symptoms by the medical profession (19). Doctors used their power and distorted beliefs to diagnose and create hysteria as a mental illness, while at the same time using women as bait to support their explanation. Most doctors based their facts on personal beliefs and were often supported by well-known organizations. , Influential diagnosticians have connections with clinical institutions, hospitals, medical schools that teach and promote their theories (18). These patients were also used as statistics, as they were vulnerable and gullible and would believe any accredited doctor, regardless of their personal biases. Unfortunately, doctors saw this opportunity and used it to their advantage. And, as time goes by, people are introduced to more diseases and forms of hysteria. Showalter states, anorexia, and bulimia are examples of modern hysterical epidemics (20). Once again, the definition of hysteria is changed when these two mental conditions are added. Both articles recognize how often personal beliefs and prejudices can originate and sustain over a period of time. It is inevitable that our beliefs unconsciously alter conclusions, resulting in false evidence, one.