The Troubled Mind in Medicine and Society
The Troubled Mind in Medicine and Society module consists of six one-hour classes that divide into three thematic units as listed below. Each class provides a brief introduction, primary or secondary source readings, and class discussion questions. Information about the module’s author, suggested use, and academic objectives, is also available online at About the Module.
Background: Medicine and Culture
Background: Medicine and Culture contains materials for two classes that are designed to help students and teachers gain important information on the history of mental illness and to raise questions about those illnesses that have come and gone, such as neurasthenia.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Era
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Era focuses on issues of the late nineteenth century: gender and how it played into thinking about women and illness; the new medical specialists, the neurologists, and their perspectives; and the experience of “nervous prostration.” Each of the three issues is explored in one of the following three classes.
Contemporary Issues
Contemporary Issues offers the sixth and final class where students explore and evaluate a range of contemporary issues: the experience of depression, contemporary biological approaches to the brain and mind, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the marketing and gendering of medications.