Sheltered Students Go to College, Avoid EducationAUG 13, 2.docx

Sheltered Students Go to College, Avoid Education
AUG 13, 2015 9:44 AM EDT
By Megan McArdle
If you've reached that crotchety age I'm at, you may be as
mystified as I am by the kids these days -- especially by how
they're behaving on campus. I get the naive leftist politics and
the wildly irresponsible partying; those things have been staples
of student life for hundreds of years. I even understand
the drive toward hamfisted censorship of views they don't like.
After all, I did my coming-of-age at the University of
Pennsylvania during the "spring from hell," when copies of the
campus newspaper were stolen to protest perceived bias against
minorities, and Eden Jacobowitz was famously brought up on
racial harassment charges for screaming "shut up, you water
buffalo" out the window at a black sorority that was conducting
a rather lively promenade down the walk below his dorm
window.
What I don't understand is the tenor of the censorship. When I
was in college, people who wanted to censor others were
forthrightly moralistic, trying to silence "bad" speech. Today's
students don't couch their demands in the language of morality,
but in the jargon of safety. They don't want you to stop teaching
books on difficult themes because those books are wrong, but
because they're dangerous, and should not be approached
without a trigger warning. They don't want to silence speakers
because their ideas are evil, but because they represent a clear
and present danger to the university community. If the
school goes ahead and has the talk anyway, they build safe
spaces so that people can cower from the scary speech together.
Are ideas dangerous? Certainly their effects can be. Ideas like
"Asbestos sure makes good insulation" and "Bleed patients to

balance the humors" racked up quite a number of fatalities.
But of course, the ideas themselves didn't kill anyone; that was
left to the people who put them into practice. The new language
of campus censorship cuts out the middleman and claims that
merely hearing wrong, unpleasant or offensive ideas is so
dangerous to the mental health of the listener that people need
to be protected from the experience.
During the time when people are supposed to be learning to face
an often hard world as adults, and going through the often
uncomfortable process of building their intellectual foundations,
they are demanding to be sheltered from anything that might
challenge their beliefs or recall unpleasant facts to their mind.
And increasingly, colleges are accommodating them. Everything
at colleges is now supposed to be thoroughly sanitized to the
point of inoffensiveness -- not only the coursework, but even
the comedians who are invited to entertain the students.
The obvious objection to this is that it is not possible to have a
community of ideas in which no one is ever offended or upset.
By the time you're done excising the Victorian literature that
offends feminists, the biology texts that offend young-earth
creationists, and the history lessons that offend whichever group
was on the losing side, there's not much left of the curriculum.
The less obvious, but even more important, objection is raised
by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in this month's
Atlantic: It's bad for the students themselves.
Students demanding that campus life be bowdlerized to preserve
their peace of mind seem to believe that the best way to deal
with trauma is to avoid any mention of it. But Lukianoff and
Haidt argue that this is exactly backward; chronic avoidance
breeds terror. The current climate on campus is a recipe for
producing fearful adults who are going to have difficulty coping
in an adult world. It's as if we were trying to prepare the next
generation of American citizens by keeping them in
kindergarten until the age of 23.
Why is this happening now? How did colleges manage to guide
generations of students through offense and outrage, only to

founder at the dawn of the 21st century? Haidt and Lukianoff
offer some plausible candidates: the increasingly sheltered lives
that middle-class children now live, and expect colleges to
sustain."In a variety of ways," they write, "children born after
1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults:
life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to
protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one
another as well." Too, partisanship is higher, and angrier, than
it was when I was in college. And today's students, who live in
a world where social media make it easy to launch
crusades, may have stronger tendencies in this direction than
my generation. (Once upon a time, an offense had to be
outrageous enough for people to go to the trouble of exchanging
phone numbers, attending meetings and printing fliers.)
There's also a regulatory component: Under Obama, the
Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has
broadened the definition for what constitutes offensive speech.
Colleges tremble in fear of lawsuits or visits from regulators,
and they send legions of administrators forth to head off any
threat by appeasing angry students and making new rules.
But here's a candidate Haidt and Lukianoff don't mention: the
steady shift toward viewing college as a consumer experience,
rather than an institution that is there to shape you toward its
own ideal. I don't want to claim that colleges used to be idylls
in which the deans never worried about collecting tuition
checks; colleges have always worried about attracting enough
students. But cultural and economic shifts have pushed students
toward behaving more like consumers in a straight commercial
transaction, and less like people who were being inducted into a
non-market institution.
Mass education, and the rise of colleges as labor market
gatekeepers, have transformed colleges from a place to be
imbued with the intangible qualities of character and education
that the elite wanted their children to have, and into a place
where you go to buy a ticket to a good job. I strongly suspect
that the increasing importance of student loans also plays a role,

because control over the tuition checks has shifted from parents
to students. And students are more worried about whether their
experience is unpleasant than are parents, who are most
interested in making sure their child is prepared for adulthood.
You see the results most visibly in the lazy rivers and rock-
climbing walls and increasingly luxurious dorms that colleges
use to compete for students, but such a shift does not limit itself
to extraneous amenities. Professors marvel at the way students
now shamelessly demand to be given good grades, regardless of
their work ethic, but that's exactly what you would expect if the
student views themselves as a consumer, and the product as a
credential, rather than an education.
So perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to find that students are
demanding to be kept sheltered from ideas they don't like -- or
that universities have begun to acquiesce to these demands. But
if it is not surprising, it is worrying. A university education is
supposed to accomplish two things: expose you to a wide
variety of ideas and help you navigate through them; and turn
you into an adult, which is to say, someone who can cope with
people, and ideas, they don't like. If the schools abdicate both
functions, then the only remaining function of an education is
the credential. But how much will the credential be worth when
the education behind it no longer prepares you for the real
world?
1. Jacobowitz, who was born in Israel, maintained that this was
not a racial slur, but a translation of the Hebrew word
"behema", slang for a thoughtless, rowdy person.
2. Of course professors should be sensitive to people with
PTSD. But most students don't have PTSD, and you don't
treat the whole class for an individual student's mental health
problem. Even if we thought this was a good idea, it's not
possible; the list of potential PTSD triggers is nearly infinite.
3. Ah, you will say, but of course we don't mean cutting
evolution out of the biology textbooks; we only mean to protect
a specific list of people. Unfortunately, in a liberal society, it
doesn't work that way; any precedent that you establish for the

groups you want to protect will inevitably be seized upon and
used by groups who want to be protected from you.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the
editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
From Bloomberg.com. Date of Access: March 7, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-08-
13/sheltered-students-go-to-college-avoid-education
3
Title
ABC/123 Version X
1
History and Perspectives Worksheet
PSY/275 Version 4
2
University of Phoenix MaterialHistory and Perspectives
Worksheet
Timeline of Events
Complete a timeline of the historical events that show the
progression of the treatment of mental illness, based on the
historical perspectives discussed in Chapter 1 of Abnormal
Psychology in a Changing World. You should have between 5-8
events.
· Event 1
· Event 2
· Event 3
· Event 4

· Event 5
· Event 6
· Event 7
· Event 8
Matching
Review the contemporary perspectives of abnormal behavior
listed in Ch. 2 of Abnormal Psychology in a Changing World.
Match the contemporary perspective on the right with the main
tenet (idea/proposition) on the left by typing the corresponding
letter of the matched perspective in the middle column. Each
perspective may be used more than once.
Main Tenet (Idea/Proposition)
Answer
Contemporary Perspective of Abnormal Psychology
1. Unconscious conflicts manifest in symptoms of mental
illness.
A. Biological Perspective
2. Psychotropic medications seek to treat mental illness by
acting on neurotransmitters that may be malfunctioning.
B. Psychological Perspective – Psychodynamic Models
3. Manipulation of information may cause cognitive distortions.
These errors in thinking produce maladaptive behaviors based
on a distorted belief that was produced by an activating event.
C. Psychological Perspective – Learning Models
4. Mental illness is a product of learned behavior that is
maladaptive.
D. Psychological Perspectives – Humanistic Models
5. The interactions of biological, psychological, and
sociocultural factors contribute to abnormal behavior.
E. Psychological Perspectives – Cognitive Models

6. Genetic factors, defects in neurotransmitter functioning, and
underlying brain abnormalities, contribute to mental illness.
F. Sociocultural Perspective
7. Our childhood experiences contribute to the development of
mental illness.
G. Biopsychosocial Perspective
8. Abnormal behavior is caused by societal failures, and is a
description of behavior that deviates from social norms.
9. A malfunction in the physiology of the body produces
symptoms of mental illness.
10. Abnormal behavior manifests from a distorted concept of
the self.
Short-Answer
Respond to the following questions in 50 to 75 words each.
1. How do assessment, diagnosis, and treatment work together
in the field of abnormal psychology? What is the role of each
process?
2. How do you know when a behavior is deemed a mental
illness?
References:
Nevid Ph.D., J. S., Rathus, S. A., & Greene, B. (2018).
Abnormal Psychology in a Changing World (10th ed.).

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reserved.
Copyright © 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved.
Abnormal Psychology
In a Changing World (Chapter 1 in Book )
Historical Perspectives on Abnormal Behavior
Throughout the history of Western culture, concepts of
abnormal behavior have been shaped, to some degree, by the
prevailing worldview of a particular era. For hundreds of years,
beliefs in supernatural forces, demons, and evil spirits held
sway. (As you’ve just seen, these beliefs still hold true in some
societies.) Abnormal behavior was often taken as a sign of
possession. In modern times, the predominant—but by no means
universal—worldview has shifted toward beliefs in science and
reason. In Western culture, abnormal behavior has come to be
viewed as the product of physical and psychosocial factors, not
demonic possession.
The Demonological Model
1. 1.4 Describe the demonological model of abnormal behavior.
Why would anyone need a hole in the head? Archaeologists
have unearthed human skeletons from the Stone Age with egg-
sized cavities in the skull. One interpretation of these holes is
that our prehistoric ancestors believed abnormal behavior was
caused by the inhabitation of evil spirits. These holes might be
the result of trephination—drilling the skull to provide an outlet
for those irascible spirits. Fresh bone growth indicates that
some people did survive this “medical procedure.”
Just the threat of trephining may have persuaded some people to
comply with tribal norms. Because no written accounts of the
purpose of trephination exist, other explanations are possible.

For instance, perhaps trephination was simply a form of surgery
to remove shattered pieces of bone or blood clots that resulted
from head injuries (Maher & Maher, 1985).
The notion of supernatural causes of abnormal behavior, or
demonology, was prominent in Western society until the Age of
Enlightenment. The ancients explained nature in terms of the
actions of the gods: The Babylonians believed the movements of
the stars and the planets expressed the adventures and conflicts
of the gods, and the Greeks believed that the gods toyed with
humans, that they unleashed havoc on disrespectful or arrogant
humans and clouded their minds with madness.In ancient
Greece, people who behaved abnormally were sent to temples
dedicated to Aesculapius, the god of healing. The Greeks
believed that Aesculapius would visit the afflicted while they
slept in the temple and offer them restorative advice through
dreams. Rest, a nutritious diet, and exercise were also part of
the treatment. Incurables were driven from the temple by
stoning. Origins of the Medical Model: In “Ill Humor”
1. 1.5 Describe the origins of the medical model of abnormal
behavior.
Not all ancient Greeks believed in the demonological model.
The seeds of naturalistic explanations of abnormal behavior
were sown by Hippocrates and developed by other physicians in
the ancient world, especially Galen.
Hippocrates (ca. 460–377 B.C.E.), the celebrated physician of
the Golden Age of Greece, challenged the prevailing beliefs of
his time by arguing that illnesses of the body and mind were the
result of natural causes, not possession by supernatural spirits.
He believed the health of the body and mind depended on the
balance of humors, or vital fluids, in the body: phlegm, black
bile, blood, and yellow bile. An imbalance of humors, he
thought, accounted for abnormal behavior. A lethargic or
sluggish person was believed to have an excess of phlegm, from
which we derive the word phlegmatic. An overabundance of
black bile was believed to cause depression, or melancholia. An
excess of blood created a sanguine disposition: cheerful,

confident, and optimistic. An excess of yellow bile made people
bilious and choleric—quick-tempered.
Though scientists no longer subscribe to Hippocrates’s theory
of bodily humors, his theory is important because of its break
from demonology. It foreshadowed the modern medical model,
the view that abnormal behavior results from underlying
biological processes. Hippocrates also made other contributions
to modern thought and, indeed, to modern medical practice. He
classified abnormal behavior patterns into three main
categories, which still have equivalents today: melancholia to
characterize excessive depression, mania to refer to exceptional
excitement, and phrenitis (from the Greek for inflammation of
the brain) to characterize the bizarre behavior that might today
typify schizophrenia. To this day, medical schools honor
Hippocrates by having students swear an oath of medical ethics
that he originated—the Hippocratic oath.
Galen (ca. 130–200 C.E.), a Greek physician who attended
Roman emperor–philosopher Marcus Aurelius, adopted and
expanded on the teachings of Hippocrates. Among Galen’s
contributions was the discovery that arteries carry blood—not
air, as had been formerly believed.
Medieval Times
1. 1.6 Describe the treatment of mental patients during medieval
times.
The Middle Ages, or medieval times, cover the millennium of
European history from about 476 C.E. through 1450 C.E. After
the passing of Galen, belief in supernatural causes and
especially the doctrine of possession increased in influence and
eventually dominated medieval thought. The doctrine of
possession held that abnormal behaviors were a sign of
possession by evil spirits or the Devil. This belief was part of
the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the central
institution in Western Europe after the decline of the Roman
Empire. Although belief in possession preceded the Church and
is found in ancient Egyptian and Greek writings, the Church
revitalized it. The Church’s treatment of choice for possession

was exorcism. Exorcists were employed to persuade evil spirits
that the bodies of the “possessed” were no longer habitable.
Methods of persuasion included prayer, incantations, waving a
cross at the victim, and beating and flogging, even starving, the
victim. If the victim continued to display unseemly behavior,
there were yet more persuasive remedies, such as the rack, a
torture device. No doubt, recipients of these “remedies”
desperately wished the Devil would vacate them immediately.
Exorcism.
This medieval woodcut illustrates the practice of exorcism,
which was used to expel the evil spirits that were believed to
have possessed people.
Description
The Renaissance—the great revival of classical learning, art,
and literature—began in Italy in the 1400s and spread
throughout Europe. Ironically, although the Renaissance is
considered the transition from the medieval to the modern
world, the fear of witches also reached its height during this
period.
Witchcraft
The late 15th through the late 17th centuries were especially
bad times to annoy your neighbors. These were times of massive
persecutions, particularly of women, who were accused of
witchcraft. Church officials believed that witches made pacts
with the Devil, practiced satanic rituals, ate babies, and
poisoned crops. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII decreed that
witches be executed. Two Dominican priests compiled a
notorious manual for witch-hunting, called the Malleus
Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer), to help inquisitors
identify suspected witches. Many thousands would be accused
of witchcraft and put to death over the next two centuries.
Witch-hunting required innovative “diagnostic” tests. For the
water-float test, suspects were dunked in a pool to certify they
were not possessed by the Devil. The test was based on the
principle of smelting, during which pure metals settle to the
bottom and impurities bob up to the surface. Suspects who sank

and drowned were ruled pure. Suspects who kept their heads
above water were judged to be in league with the Devil. As the
saying went, you were “damned if you do and damned if you
don’t.” This so-called test was one way in which medieval
authorities sought to detect possession and witchcraft.
Managing to float above the waterline was deemed a sign of
impurity. In the lower right corner, you can see the bound hands
and feet of one poor unfortunate who failed to remain afloat,
but whose drowning would have cleared any suspicions of
possession.
Description
Modern scholars once believed these so-called witches were
actually people with psychological disorders who were
persecuted because of their abnormal behavior. Many suspected
witches did confess to bizarre behaviors, such as flying or
engaging in sexual intercourse with the Devil, which suggests
the types of disturbed behavior associated with modern
conceptions of schizophrenia. However, these confessions must
be discounted because they were extracted under torture by
inquisitors who were bent on finding evidence to support
accusations of witchcraft (Spanos, 1978). We know today that
the threat of torture and other forms of intimidation are
sufficient to extract false confessions. Although some who were
persecuted as witches probably did show abnormal behavior
patterns, most did not (Schoenman, 1984). Rather, it appears
that accusations of witchcraft were a convenient means of
disposing of social nuisances and political rivals, of seizing
property, and of suppressing heresy (Spanos, 1978). In English
villages, many of the accused were poor, unmarried elderly
women who were forced to beg for food from their neighbors. If
misfortune befell the people who declined to give help, the
beggar might be accused of having cast a curse on the
household. If the woman was generally unpopular, an accusation
of witchcraft was likely to follow.
Demons were believed to play roles in both abnormal behavior
and witchcraft. However, although some victims of demonic

possession were perceived to be afflicted as retribution for their
own wrongdoing, others were considered to be innocent
victims—possessed by demons through no fault of their own.
Witches were believed to have renounced God and voluntarily
entered into a pact with the Devil. Witches generally were seen
as more deserving of torture and execution (Spanos, 1978).
Historical trends do not follow straight lines. Although the
demonological model held sway during the Middle Ages and
much of the Renaissance, it did not completely supplant belief
in naturalistic causes. In medieval England, for example,
demonic possession was only rarely invoked in cases in which a
person was held to be insane by legal authorities (Neugebauer,
1979). Most explanations for unusual behavior involved natural
causes, such as physical illness or trauma to the brain. In
England, in fact, some disturbed people were kept in hospitals
until they were restored to sanity (Allderidge, 1979). The
Renaissance Belgian physician Johann Weyer (1515–1588) also
took up the cause of Hippocrates and Galen by arguing that
abnormal behavior and thought patterns were caused by physical
problems.
Asylums
By the late 15th and early 16th centuries, asylums, or
madhouses, began to appear throughout Europe. Many were
former leprosariums, which were no longer needed because of
the decline in leprosy after the late Middle Ages. Asylums often
gave refuge to beggars as well as the mentally disturbed, but
conditions were appalling. Residents were chained to their beds
and left to lie in their own waste or to wander about unassisted.
Some asylums became public spectacles. In one asylum in
London, St. Mary’s of Bethlehem Hospital—from which the
word bedlam is derived—the public could buy tickets to observe
the antics of the inmates, much as we would pay to see a circus
sideshow or animals at the zoo. T / F
TRUTH or FICTION
1. A night’s entertainment in London a few hundred years ago
might have included gaping at the inmates at the local asylum.

TRUE A night on the town for the gentry of London sometimes
included a visit to a local asylum, St. Mary’s of Bethlehem
Hospital, to gawk at the patients. We derive the word bedlam
from Bethlehem Hospital.
The Reform Movement and Moral Therapy
1. 1.7 Identify the leading reformers of the treatment of the
mentally ill and describe the principle underlying moral therapy
and the changes that occurred in the treatment of mental
patients during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The modern era of treatment begins with the efforts of the
Frenchmen Jean-Baptiste Pussin and Philippe Pinel in the late
18th and early 19th centuries. They argued that people who
behave abnormally suffer from diseases and should be treated
humanely. This view was not popular at the time; mentally
disturbed people were regarded as threats to society, not as sick
people in need of treatment.
From 1784 to 1802, Pussin, a layman, was placed in charge of a
ward for people considered “incurably insane” at La Bicêtre, a
large mental hospital in Paris. Although Pinel is often credited
with freeing the inmates of La Bicêtre from their chains, Pussin
was actually the first official to unchain a group of the
“incurably insane.” These unfortunates had been considered too
dangerous and unpredictable to be left unchained, but Pussin
believed that if they were treated with kindness, there would be
no need for chains. As he predicted, most of the shut-ins were
manageable and calm after their chains were removed. They
could walk the hospital grounds and take in fresh air. Pussin
also forbade the staff from treating the residents harshly, and he
fired employees who ignored his directives.
Bedlam.
The bizarre antics of the patients at St. Mary’s of Bethlehem
Hospital in London in the 18th century were a source of
entertainment for the well-heeled gentry of the town, such as
the two well-dressed women in the middle of the painting.
Description

Pinel (1745–1826) became the medical director for the
incurables’ ward at La Bicêtre in 1793 and continued the
humane treatment Pussin had begun. He stopped harsh practices
such as bleeding and purging, and moved patients from
darkened dungeons to well-ventilated, sunny rooms. Pinel also
spent hours talking to inmates, in the belief that showing
understanding and concern would help restore them to normal
functioning.
The philosophy of treatment that emerged from these efforts
was labeled moral therapy. It was based on the belief that
providing humane treatment in a relaxed and decent
environment could restore functioning. Similar reforms were
instituted at about this time in England by William Tuke and
later in the United States by Dorothea Dix. Another influential
figure was the American physician Benjamin Rush (1745–
1813)—also a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and
an early leader of the antislavery movement. Rush, considered
the father of American psychiatry, penned the first American
textbook on psychiatry in 1812: Medical Inquiries and
Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind. He believed that
madness is caused by engorgement of the blood vessels of the
brain. To relieve pressure, he recommended bloodletting,
purging, and ice-cold baths. He advanced humane treatment by
encouraging the staff of his Philadelphia Hospital to treat
patients with kindness, respect, and understanding. He also
favored the therapeutic use of occupational therapy, music, and
travel (Farr, 1994). His hospital became the first in the United
States to admit patients for psychological disorders.
The unchaining of inmates at La Biĉetre by 18th-century French
reformer Philippe Pinel.
Continuing the work of Jean-Baptiste Pussin, Pinel stopped
harsh practices such as bleeding and purging, and moved
inmates from darkened dungeons to sunny, airy rooms. Pinel
also took the time to converse with inmates, in the belief that
understanding and concern would help restore them to normal

functioning.
Description
Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), a Boston schoolteacher, traveled
about the country decrying the deplorable conditions in the jails
and almshouses where mentally disturbed people were placed.
As a result of her efforts, 32 mental hospitals devoted to
treating people with psychological disorders were established
throughout the United States.
A Step Backward
In the latter half of the 19th century, the belief that abnormal
behaviors could be successfully treated or cured by moral
therapy fell into disfavor. A period of apathy ensued in which
patterns of abnormal behavior were deemed incurable (Grob,
1994, 2009). Mental institutions in the United States grew in
size but provided little more than custodial care. Conditions
deteriorated. Mental hospitals became frightening places. It was
not uncommon to find residents “wallowing in their own
excrements,” in the words of a New York State official of the
time (Grob, 1983). Straitjackets, handcuffs, cribs, straps, and
other devices were used to restrain excitable or violent patients.
Deplorable hospital conditions remained commonplace through
the middle of the 20th century. By the mid-1950s, the
population in mental hospitals had risen to half a million.
Although some state hospitals provided decent and humane
care, many were described as little more than human snake pits.
Residents were crowded into wards that lacked even
rudimentary sanitation. Mental patients in back wards were
essentially warehoused—that is, left to live out their lives with
little hope or expectation of recovery or a return to the
community. Many received little professional care and were
abused by poorly trained and supervised staffs. Finally, these
appalling conditions led to calls for reforms of the mental
health system. These reforms ushered in a movement toward
deinstitutionalization, a policy of shifting the burden of care
from state hospitals to community-based treatment settings,
which led to a wholesale exodus from state mental hospitals.

The mental hospital population across the United States has
plummeted from nearly 600,000 in the 1950s to about 40,000
today (“Rate of Patients,” 2012). Some mental hospitals were
closed entirely.
Another factor that laid the groundwork for the mass exodus
from mental hospitals was the development of a new class of
drugs—the phenothiazines. This group of antipsychotic drugs,
which helped quell the most flagrant behavior patterns
associated with schizophrenia, was introduced in the 1950s.
Phenothiazines reduced the need for indefinite hospital stays
and permitted many people with schizophrenia to be discharged
to halfway houses, group homes, and independent living.
The mental hospital.
Under the policy of deinstitutionalization, mental hospitals
today provide a range of services, including short-term
treatment of people in crisis or in need of a secure treatment
setting. They also provide long-term treatment in a structured
environment for people who are unable to function in less-
restrictive community settings.
The Role of the Mental Hospital Today
1. 1.8 Describe the role of mental hospitals in the mental health
system.
Most state hospitals today are better managed and provide more
humane care than those of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but
here and there, deplorable conditions persist. Today’s state
hospital is generally more treatment-oriented and focuses on
preparing residents to return to community living. State
hospitals function as part of an integrated, comprehensive
approach to treatment. They provide a structured environment
for people who are unable to function in a less-restrictive
community setting. When hospitalization has restored patients
to a higher level of functioning, the patients are reintegrated in
the community and given follow-up care and transitional
residences, if needed. If a community-based hospital is not
available or if they require more extensive care, patients may be

rehospitalized as needed in a state hospital. For younger and
less intensely disturbed people, the state hospital stay is
typically briefer than it was in the past, lasting only until their
conditions allow them to reenter society. Older, chronic
patients, however, may be unprepared to handle the most
rudimentary tasks of independent life (shopping, cooking,
cleaning, and so on)—in part because the state hospital may be
the only home such patients have known as adults.
The Community Mental Health Movement
1. 1.9 Describe the goals and outcomes of the community
mental health movement.
In 1963, the U.S. Congress established a nationwide system of
community mental health centers (CMHCs) intended to offer an
alternative to long-term custodial care in bleak institutions.
CMHCs were charged with providing continuing support and
mental health care to former hospital residents released from
state mental hospitals. Unfortunately, not enough CMHCs have
been established to serve the needs of hundreds of thousands of
formerly hospitalized patients and to prevent the need to
hospitalize new patients by providing comprehensive,
community-based care and structured residential treatment
settings, such as halfway houses.
The community mental health movement and the policy of
deinstitutionalization were developed in the hope that mental
patients could return to their communities and assume more
independent and fulfilling lives, but deinstitutionalization has
often been criticized for failing to live up to its lofty
expectations. The discharge of mental patients from state
hospitals left many thousands of marginally functioning people
in communities that lacked adequate housing and other forms of
support they needed to function. Although the community
mental health movement has had some successes, a great many
patients with severe and persistent mental health problems fail
to receive the range of mental health and social services they
need to adjust to life in the community (Lieberman, 2010;
Sederer & Sharfstein, 2014). As you shall see, one of the major

challenges facing the community mental health system is the
problem of psychiatric homelessness.
Deinstitutionalization and the Psychiatric Homeless Population
Many of the homeless wandering city streets and sleeping in bus
terminals and train stations are discharged mental patients or
persons with disturbed behavior who might well have been
hospitalized in earlier times, before deinstitutionalization was
in place. Lacking adequate support, they often face more
dehumanizing conditions on the street than they did in the
hospital. Many compound their problems by turning to illegal
street drugs such as crack. Some of the younger psychiatric
homeless population might have remained hospitalized in earlier
times but are now, in the wake of deinstitutionalization,
directed toward community support programs when they are
available. The problem of psychiatric homelessness is not
limited to the United States. A recent study in Denmark showed
that about 60% of the homeless population had diagnosable
psychiatric disorders (Nielsen et al., 2011).
An estimated 20% to 30% of the homeless population suffers
from severe psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia
(Yager, 2015). Many also have neuropsychological
impairments, including significant problems with memory,
learning, and concentration, which leaves them disadvantaged in
seeking and holding a job (Bousman et al., 2011). As many as
50% of the homeless population also suffer from substance
abuse problems that largely go untreated (Yager, 2015).
The lack of available housing, transitional care facilities, and
effective case management plays an important role in
homelessness among people with psychiatric problems
(Rosenheck, 2012; Stergiopoulos, Gozdzik, et al., 2015). Some
homeless people with severe psychiatric problems are
repeatedly hospitalized for brief stays in community-based
hospitals during acute episodes. They move back and forth
between the hospital and the community as though caught in a
revolving door. Frequently, they are released from the hospital
with inadequate arrangements for housing and community care.

Some are essentially left to fend for themselves. Although many
state hospitals closed their doors and others slashed the number
of beds, states failed to provide sufficient funds to support
services needed in the community to replace the need for long-
term hospitalization. Many homeless people have severe
psychological problems but fall through the cracks of the mental
health and social service systems.
The mental health system alone does not have the resources to
resolve the multifaceted problems faced by the psychiatric
homeless population. Helping the psychiatric homeless escape
from homelessness requires matching services to their needs in
an integrated effort involving mental health and alcohol and
drug abuse programs; access to decent, affordable housing; and
provision of other social services (Stergiopoulos, Gozdzik, et
al., 2015). Another difficulty is that homeless people with
severe psychological problems typically do not seek out mental
health services. Many have become disenfranchised from mental
health services because of previous bad hospital stays, during
which they were treated poorly or felt disrespected,
dehumanized, or simply ignored (Price, 2009). We need
intensive outreach and intervention efforts to help homeless
people connect with the services they need as well as programs
that provide a better quality of care to homeless individuals
(Price, 2009; Stergiopoulos, Gozdzik, et al., 2015). All in all,
the problems of the psychiatric homeless population remain
complex, vexing problems for the mental health system and
society at large.
Deinstitutionalization: A Promise as Yet Unfulfilled
Although the net results of deinstitutionalization may not yet
have lived up to expectations, a number of successful
community-oriented programs are available. However, they
remain underfunded and unable to reach many people needing
ongoing community support. If deinstitutionalization is to
succeed, patients need continuing care and opportunities for
decent housing, gainful employment, and training in social and
vocational skills. Most people with severe psychiatric disorders,

such as schizophrenia, live in their communities, but only about
half of them are currently in treatment (Torrey, 2011).
New, promising services exist to improve community-based care
for people with chronic psychological disorders—for example,
psychosocial rehabilitation centers, family psychoeducational
groups, supportive housing and work programs, and social skills
training. Unfortunately, too few of these services exist to meet
the needs of many patients who might benefit from them. The
community mental health movement must have expanded
community support and adequate financial resources if it is to
succeed in fulfilling its original promise.
Psychiatric homelessness.
Many homeless people have severe psychological problems but
fall through the cracks of the mental health and social service
systems.
The mental health system alone does not have the resources to
resolve the multifaceted problems faced by the psychiatric
homeless population. Helping the psychiatric homeless escape
from homelessness requires matching services to their needs in
an integrated effort involving mental health and alcohol and
drug abuse programs; access to decent, affordable housing; and
provision of other social services (Stergiopoulos, Gozdzik, et
al., 2015). Another difficulty is that homeless people with
severe psychological problems typically do not seek out mental
health services. Many have become disenfranchised from mental
health services because of previous bad hospital stays, during
which they were treated poorly or felt disrespected,
dehumanized, or simply ignored (Price, 2009). We need
intensive outreach and intervention efforts to help homeless
people connect with the services they need as well as programs
that provide a better quality of care to homeless individuals
(Price, 2009; Stergiopoulos, Gozdzik, et al., 2015). All in all,
the problems of the psychiatric homeless population remain
complex, vexing problems for the mental health system and
society at large.

Deinstitutionalization: A Promise as Yet Unfulfilled
Although the net results of deinstitutionalization may not yet
have lived up to expectations, a number of successful
community-oriented programs are available. However, they
remain underfunded and unable to reach many people needing
ongoing community support. If deinstitutionalization is to
succeed, patients need continuing care and opportunities for
decent housing, gainful employment, and training in social and
vocational skills. Most people with severe psychiatric disorders,
such as schizophrenia, live in their communities, but only about
half of them are currently in treatment (Torrey, 2011).
New, promising services exist to improve community-based care
for people with chronic psychological disorders—for example,
psychosocial rehabilitation centers, family psychoeducational
groups, supportive housing and work programs, and social skills
training. Unfortunately, too few of these services exist to meet
the needs of many patients who might benefit from them. The
community mental health movement must have expanded
community support and adequate financial resources if it is to
succeed in fulfilling its original promise.
Microaggressions Matter
They may not always be ill-intentioned, but the slights
illuminate deeper problems in America.
SIMBA RUNYOWA
SEP 18, 2015
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
When I was studying at Oberlin College, a fellow student once
compared me to her dog.
Because my name is Simba, a name Americans associate with
animals, she unhelpfully shared that her dog’s name was also
Simba. She froze with embarrassment, realizing that her remark

could be perceived as debasing and culturally insensitive.
It’s a good example of what social-justice activists term
microaggressions—behaviors or statements that do not
necessarily reflect malicious intent but which nevertheless can
inflict insult or injury.
I wasn’t particularly offended by the dog comparison. I found it
amusing at best and tone deaf at worst.
But other slights cut deeper. As an immigrant, my peers
relentlessly inquired, “How come your English is so good?”—as
if eloquence were beyond the intellectual reach of people who
look like me. An African American friend once asked an
academic advisor for information about majoring in biology
and, without being asked about her academic record (which was
excellent), was casually directed to “look up less-challenging
courses in African American Studies instead.”
I, too, have sometimes made what turned out to be deeply
offensive remarks unintentionally. So I am in no rush to
conclude that any of these people harbor ill intent. In fact,
they’re probably well-meaning and good-hearted people.
But the fact remains that those words were fundamentally
inappropriate and offensive. Even though I don’t think the
student really meant to compare me to a dog, the incident
nonetheless stayed with me. The impact of her words and
actions mattered more than her intent. It is all too easy to hurt
and insult others without exercising vigilance in interacting
with those whose lived experiences are different than our own.
This particularly matters in the context of universities. Colleges
are charged with providing an education in an environment in
which everyone feels welcome. However, for historical reasons,
people of color, LGBT people, and others who do not conform
to the dominant demographics prevalent at most institutions of
higher education in this country already don’t always feel
included or welcome. As campaigns like I too am Harvard or the
satirical film Dear White People have attempted to illustrate,
microaggressions targeted at minorities only serve to amplify
those feelings of alienation.

This is because microaggressions point out cultural difference
in ways that put the recipient’s non-conformity into sharp relief,
often causing anxiety and crises of belonging on the part of
minorities. When your peers at a prestigious university express
dismay at the ability of a person of color to master English, it
calls your presence in that institution into question and
magnifies your difference in ways that can be alienating. It can
even induce imposter syndrome or stereotype threat, both of
which I have felt while studying at Oberlin. The former is
feeling insecure, undeserving, or unaccomplished enough to be
in a particular setting while latter is the debilitation that can
arise from the constant fear of validating a stereotype about
people from your identity groupings.
The turn towards political correctness in academia, to which the
concept of microaggressions belongs, is sometimes
mischaracterized as an obsession with the creation of victims or
shoehorning radically liberal ideas into college students. Others
have argued that political correctness evangelizes a new kind of
moral righteousness that over-privileges identity politics
and silences conservative viewpoints.
What these critics miss is that the striving for “PC culture” on
college campuses is actually rooted in empathy. The basic
tenets of this culture are predicated on the powerful impulse to
usher both justice and humanity into everyday social
transactions. Given the visible (albeit slow) rise in diversity on
campuses, the lexicon of social justice invites students to
engage with difference in more intelligent and nuanced ways,
and to train their minds to entertain more complex views of the
world.
Take for instance, the prevalent use of non-traditional gender
pronouns at Oberlin College, a practice becoming increasingly
common elsewhere, as well. They acknowledge that people can
identify with many genders, not just along the binary of male
and female. Using a person’s preferred or desired gender
pronouns (such as the gender neutral “they” instead of she or
he) is not a meaningless exercise in identity politics—it is an

acknowledgement of a person’s innermost identity, conferring
both respect and dignity.
The ability to deftly navigate these finely textured strata of
diversity in the face of changing demographics and societal
values, coupled with the intensification of globalization, is a
skill that can only pay dividends for all students as they prepare
to confront a future that will be marked by an intricate
pluralism.
Last week, my colleague Conor Friedersdorf cited the
website Oberlin Microaggressions as an example of political
correctness run amok. Unearthing one extreme confrontation
between a white student and a Hispanic student over the
former’s allegedly appropriative use of a Spanish word,
ignoring many more obviously offensive examples on the site,
Friedersdorf extrapolated from that single incident to argue that
Oberlin is the archetype of a malignant “victimhood culture” in
which college students are instrumentalizing oppression as a
means to accumulate higher social standing through eliciting
sympathy from others.
He quoted from a sociological study that supports his argument:
The culture on display on many college and university
campuses, by way of contrast, is “characterized by concern with
status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance
on third parties … Domination is the main form of deviance,
and victimization a way of attracting sympathy, so rather than
emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved
emphasize their oppression and social marginalization.”
But there is nothing glamorous about being subjected to racism,
and certainly no social rewards to be reaped from being the
victim of oppression in a society that heaps disadvantage on
historically marginalized groups. So why would people
willingly designate themselves as victims if they do not truly
feel that way? The only people who benefit from oppression are
the ones who are exempt from it—not the ones who suffer
through it.
The study quoted by Friedersdorf chastises those who mobilize

in response to the injustices they perceive. He cosigns the
definition of microaggressions as “a form of social control in
which the aggrieved collect and publicize accounts of
intercollective offenses, making the case that relatively minor
slights are part of a larger pattern of injustice and that those
who suffer them are socially marginalized and deserving of
sympathy.”
But it makes sense that marginalized groups would attempt to
form coalitions and enlist allies. They are severely
underrepresented on most campuses. At Oberlin, for instance,
black students form only 5.2 percent of students, Hispanic
students 7.2 percent, and Asian Americans 4.2 percent.
Minorities, by virtue of their being in the minority, do not and
cannot exert robust social control of any kind at elite
universities like Oberlin. When appealing to other students and
administrators for validation and support after encountering
discrimination, such students are scarcely clamoring to be seen
as victims. They’re grasping to gain some small degree of
power that can amplify their voices, where their concerns are so
often silenced or ignored.
The only people who benefit from oppression are the ones who
are exempt from it—not the ones who suffer through it.
It’s the persistence of exclusion, alienation, and discrimination
within the academy that spurs the emergence of sites like
Oberlin Microaggressions at Smith, Swarthmore, and other
colleges in the first place. In the case of Oberlin, the site was
formed in direct response to a series of racist incidents, and the
persistent harassment of students and faculty of color that
included defacing of Black History Month posters with the N-
word. Oberlin’s reputation as an extremely liberal college led
many to dismiss claims of racism. The site was built
to catalogue these experiences as proof of the various ways in
which racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of
discrimination were, in fact, commonplace.
Those who disagree with paying attention to microaggressions
often argue that they are much ado about nothing. Why can’t

these minor slights be ignored, easily forgiven, or graciously
laughed into disappearance? Viewed within the context of
seemingly larger problems, the entire notion of
microaggressions can seem trivial.
These critics have a point: There are indeed some
microaggressions that may not be worth interrogating or
intellectualizing. The internet, in particular, has contributed to
an exhausting cycle of retributive outrage that spins the
smallest error into a scandal. But at the same time,
microaggressions do not emerge from a vacuum. Often, they
expose the internalized prejudices that lurk beneath the veneer
of our carefully curated public selves.
It is certainly worth exploring microaggressions on the basis of
their link to implicit biases, and the ways in which they can
both telegraph and contribute to the proliferation of more
invidious, macro-level prejudices. Implicit biases have serious
material consequences beyond hurt feelings, from
discriminatory hiring to racial inequities in policing and the
broader U.S. criminal-justice system. In other words,
microaggressions matter because they seem to be both
symptoms and causes of larger structural problems.
The call to downplay microaggressions also underestimates the
powerful effect of sanctioning them instead. Calling out
microaggressions can serve as a deterrent. From the perspective
of social-justice advocates, accountability incentivizes more
thoughtful communication across lines of gender, race,
sexuality, and gender identity. It codifies the empathy that can
help lead to a more inclusive atmosphere.
Critics will argue that political correctness is addicted to
shutting out opposing views. That gets it backwards. Only the
empathy fostered by the dictates of political correctness can
help us productively encounter difference.

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