Search

April 2020 marks what would have been the hundredth birthday of Professor Thomas Stephen Szasz, who passed away in 2012. This year was also the 60th anniversary of the first publication of his iconoclastic thesis on the "myth of mental illness." In the present paper, Szasz's main views on mental illness and modern psychiatry are summarized. By showing the origins of Szasz's ideas in particular, it describes the following topics: Szasz's distinction between bodily disease and mental illness, his preoccupation with the progressive medicalization of everyday life, his description of psychiatry as an institution of social control, his critique of the therapeutic state, i.e., the alliance between psychiatry and the state, and his deliberations on liberty, personal freedom and responsibility. While addressing Szasz's main critics, the paper attempts to show the influence of Szasz's concept on today's psychiatry and stresses that despite well-deserved criticism he expressed some of the epistemological and ethical problems of modern psychiatry better than anyone else, which makes his legacy still important for the mental health practitioners of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Despite a growing interest in the health and psychosocial consequences of caring for a person with Huntington's disease (pHD), little is still known about family caregivers of such patients in Poland. At the same time, while researchers focus on the needs, quality of life and caregiving burden, they frequently omit caregivers' experiences with healthcare services. Aim. This paper aims to report a study on the perception of healthcare services of family caregivers of pHD. Material and method. The research was carried out between August and December 2014 among 55 family caregivers of pHD. The respondents were recruited via the Polish Huntington Disease Association and a discussion forum for pHD and their carers. The material was collected via semi-structured interviews and analysed using a content and thematic analysis of the transcripts. Results. Four themes emerged during the interviews: 1) Lack of information on HD from physicians; 2) Negative experience with health professionals 3) Lack of emotional support, and 4) General dissatisfaction with healthcare services. Caregivers were frustrated by the lack of knowledge about HD from physicians and believed that they do not show enough empathy and support to caregivers. They also felt let down by the system and expressed general lack of trust in the standard of healthcare. Conclusions. This study revealed HD caregivers' complex needs for healthcare assistance and emotional support. For that reason health and social professionals should monitor caregivers' mental health, identify the sources of their distress and support effective strategies to cope with the stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caring for a person with chronic disease often rests on the patient's family. Nevertheless, most studies on the needs, quality of life and caregiver burden focus on different types of dementia, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, stroke, cancer or mental illnesses. Less attention has been paid to informal caregivers of patients with Huntington's disease (HD). Meanwhile, psychosocial implications of HD are much more serious and wide-ranging. Thus, this paper aims to review the literature on the costs of caring for a person with HD (pHD). The review identifies the aspects of caregiving that are the most burdensome to family caregivers: negative experience with health and social care services, dissatisfaction with caregiving role, concern over children, loss of meaningful relationship with pHD, family breakdown and loss of social contacts and decrease in health. It also describes strategies of coping with HD. While the analysis points to the many similarities between taking care of HD patients and those suffering from other neurodegenerative disorders, it also emphasizes the factors associated with HD that are not present in other diseases: early onset, severity of symptoms, prolonged trajectory, its genetic, i.e. hereditary character and social ignorance of HD. It concludes that while in medical setting the HD patient is the one who draws professional attention, it is often the unaffected family caregiver who needs the most attention, support and help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]