Place to explore "adaptive but aversive" definitions of mental illness?

[StartingtheProcess83298353]

A recent article called "Mental Health is Biological Health" (Hagen and Syme 2019) has called for overhauling the entire field of psychiatry (they are anthropologists)...they create different categories for mental illness(es) including one which they called "adaptive but aversive" (e.g., depression, anxiety); these are seen as reactions to life-events which aren't necessarily disorders (but do cause distress).

I am fascinated by this approach and would like to explore it, can anyone recommend a place anywhere in the English-speaking world which would be a good place to start? (currently I'm looking at an MSc in "Psychology, Culture and Evolution" at Brunel just west of London but studying overseas is a complicated issue right now obviously).

Thanks

[Clinapp2017]

A little confused by this post. So you want to study this concept more in graduate school? 
 

The reason I’m confused is this is not a novel concept. All emotions can be adaptive; the definition of an emotional disorder implies that the emotions, which were once helpful to us in some way, have become aversive experiences and are impairing some aspect of daily life. The emotional disorders can be caused by distressing events, but are not always tied to a precipitating event. Most clinical psychologists agree about this, so what exactly interests you about this perspective (or am I missing something)?

[PsyZei]

This sounds an awful lot like they are calling for a systemic therapeutic style. You should look at Marriage and Family Therapy or another human ecological approach- the name (in today's culture) is misleading to the point there has been talk about rebranding to just calling it Systemic Therapy. It is common for MFTs (especially postmodern MFTs, like myself) to feel that diagnosis are bull and that people are normal and responding in normal human ways to whatever situation or event they have experienced that has been traumatic, stressful, etc... As well as putting heavy emphasis on the fact that people act and react from within a system- which heavily influences their experiences of stress and distress, as well as the behavior patterns they have learned and that are available to them for use- and that this must be addressed in therapy. This is literally the reason I veered off the traditional psychology path (my undergrad degree is in just vanilla psychology) and opted for the less mainstream MFT path.

Anyways, have fun looking into stuff. As an undergrad I ran into a similar paradigm shift and I am so glad I did. I hope you find the type of approach and a corresponding program that you are looking for.

[StartingtheProcess83298353]

On 6/18/2020 at 11:29 PM, Clinapp2017 said:

A little confused by this post. So you want to study this concept more in graduate school? 
 

The reason I’m confused is this is not a novel concept. All emotions can be adaptive; the definition of an emotional disorder implies that the emotions, which were once helpful to us in some way, have become aversive experiences and are impairing some aspect of daily life. The emotional disorders can be caused by distressing events, but are not always tied to a precipitating event. Most clinical psychologists agree about this, so what exactly interests you about this perspective (or am I missing something)?

I think there's a distinction between what I'm saying insofar as these "aversive emotions" (or whatever you want to call them) actually do have a positive function (which nonetheless clashes with what society whats/requires so they become "dysfunctional").

So I think in a way it's very different from the field at large, because it calls into question the very notion of psychological pathology (but yes I want to study this in grad school, and/or find a program which incorporates this perspective).

[RandomPotato]

9 hours ago, StartingtheProcess83298353 said:

I think there's a distinction between what I'm saying insofar as these "aversive emotions" (or whatever you want to call them) actually do have a positive function (which nonetheless clashes with what society whats/requires so they become "dysfunctional").

So I think in a way it's very different from the field at large, because it calls into question the very notion of psychological pathology (but yes I want to study this in grad school, and/or find a program which incorporates this perspective).

Sounds a little bit like functional contextualism to me where there isn't right or wrong emotions/behaviors like CBT (where the focus is to reduce and hopefully eliminate 'wrong' thinking pattern) and every so called dysfunctional behaviors serve some kind of useful function to the person (Ex. Suicidal thoughts provide sense of comfort to someone suffering from severe depression). Instead of determining right or wrong based on social/cultural norms and fixing the wrong behaviors, functional contextual therapists believe every client has their stand-alone context/reality and the goal is to help clients function better in their own context. ACT and RFT are two popular approaches grounded in this framework. 

[StartingtheProcess83298353]

12 minutes ago, RandomPotato said:

Sounds a little bit like functional contextualism to me where there isn't right or wrong emotions/behaviors like CBT (where the focus is to reduce and hopefully eliminate 'wrong' thinking pattern) and every so called dysfunctional behaviors serve some kind of useful function to the person (Ex. Suicidal thoughts provide sense of comfort to someone suffering from severe depression). Instead of determining right or wrong based on social/cultural norms and fixing the wrong behaviors, functional contextual therapists believe every client has their stand-alone context/reality and the goal is to help clients function better in their own context. ACT and RFT are two popular approaches grounded in this framework. 

I suppose so although I've never heard that particular term. The only distinction I would draw is that it's not simply about rejecting societal norms in evaluating behaviors, but determining whether they're useful and/or productive in achieving desired outcomes which necessarily involves the reality of others (but not necessarily "society" per se).

(I'm wary of the latent solipsism of philosophies which seek to promote well-being on purely self-defined terms. But these are relatively fine points; it sounds like RFT is closer than ACT to what I'm saying.)

Edited December 23, 2020 by StartingtheProcess83298353

[Clinapp2017]

6 hours ago, StartingtheProcess83298353 said:

I suppose so although I've never heard that particular term. The only distinction I would draw is that it's not simply about rejecting societal norms in evaluating behaviors, but determining whether they're useful and/or productive in achieving desired outcomes which necessarily involves the reality of others (but not necessarily "society" per se).

(I'm wary of the latent solipsism of philosophies which seek to promote well-being on purely self-defined terms. But these are relatively fine points; it sounds like RFT is closer than ACT to what I'm saying.)

Maybe I am missing the nuance of your points, but I largely think any good program which trains in CBT, ACT, and DBT would fit your needs. The concept you describe is flexibly applied in most modern evidence-based approaches (minus the philosophy of what is/is not socially appropriate). Most therapists who use these evidence based techniques will work on building up a toolbox of different ways to respond to emotions/situations AND teach clients that emotions serve a purpose, so often we should listen to them but may need to employ other skills to reduce the extreme aversive reaction to the emotions. 

 

Where you want to go in the end should center on your end goal (academia? clinical work?). It's a very important topic, especially as we think cross-culturally about the views of emotions and emotional dysregulation. 

[StartingtheProcess83298353]

15 minutes ago, Clinapp2017 said:

Maybe I am missing the nuance of your points, but I largely think any good program which trains in CBT, ACT, and DBT would fit your needs. The concept you describe is flexibly applied in most modern evidence-based approaches (minus the philosophy of what is/is not socially appropriate). Most therapists who use these evidence based techniques will work on building up a toolbox of different ways to respond to emotions/situations AND teach clients that emotions serve a purpose, so often we should listen to them but may need to employ other skills to reduce the extreme aversive reaction to the emotions. 

 

Where you want to go in the end should center on your end goal (academia? clinical work?). It's a very important topic, especially as we think cross-culturally about the views of emotions and emotional dysregulation. 

I'm not what my endgoal is, I'm just interested in a perspective which recognizes that "disorders" themselves (not just "emotions") have an underlying purpose (maybe you're saying in practice those two things collapse together).