Abstract
By the 1980s, two particular concerns had begun to catch the attention of those interested in mental health. The first was the realisation that medical professionals (and GPs in particular) appeared to be particularly vulnerable to mental ill health and addiction to drugs and alcohol. The second was a growing concern about the psychological health of those who had emigrated to Britain in the decades following the Second World War. They are explored here because together they are illustrative of many of the broad themes already explored in this book, and serve to advance the core arguments put forward in earlier chapters. Concerns, for example, surrounded the working practice of doctors and the provision of support should they require it. Alcohol consumption among doctors, too, heavily influenced the approaches taken towards patients who presented with possible alcohol addiction. Among ethnic minorities, discussions explored sickness absence and absenteeism, reflecting many of the debates explored in Chapter 2. Among both groups, in different ways, the ability (or otherwise) to recognise psychological illness and the willingness to report it further elucidate our knowledge of male psychological illness. Although their experiences are very different, their stories bring together much of what has been revealed thus far.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Notes
M. F. a’Brook, J. D. Hailstone and E. J. McLauchlan, ‘Psychiatric illness in the medical profession’, British Journal of Psychiatry (1967), 113, 1013–23, on 1013.
Robin M. Murray, ‘Psychiatric illness in male doctors and controls: An analysis of Scottish hospitals in-patient data’, British Journal of Psychiatry (1977), 131, 1–10, on 3.
M. M. Glatt, ‘Alcoholism, an occupational hazard for doctors’, Journal of Alcoholism (1976), 11, 85–91 on 85.
R. A. Franklin, ‘One hundred doctors at the retreat: A contribution to the subject of mental disorder in the medical profession’, British Journal of Psychiatry (1977), 131, 11–14, on 12.
S. E. D. Short, ‘Psychiatric illness in physicians’, Journal of the Canadian Medical Association (1979), 121, 283–8, on 287.
See for example the account from Robin M. Murray, ‘The alcoholic doctor’, British Journal of Hospital Medicine (1977), 18, 144–9, on 147.
John C. Duffy and Edward M. Litin, ‘Psychiatric morbidity of physicians’, Journal of the American Medical Association (1964), 189, 989–92, on 990.
Ash Samanta and Jo Samanta, ‘Regulation of the medical profession: Fantasy, reality and legality’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2004), 97, 211–18, on 211.
B. Marien and F. Mckinna, Editorial, ‘The elephant in the room’, Clinical Oncology (2012), 24, 654–6, on 654.
J. L. Evans, ‘Psychiatric illness in the physician’s wife’, American Journal of Psychiatry (1965), 122, 159–63, cited in a’Brook, ‘Psychiatric illness in the medical profession’, 1018.
S. E. D. Short, Review Article, ‘Psychiatric illness in physicians’, Journal of the Canadian Medical Association (1979), 121, 238–88, on 284.
Panikos Panayi, An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800 (Harlow, Pearso, 2010), p. 23.
C. C. Baker and S. J. Pocock, ‘Ethnic differences in certified sickness absence’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine (1982), 39, 277–82, on 277.
Charles Zwingmann and Maria Pfister-Ammende, Uprooting and After (New York, Springer Verlag, 1973), pp. 2–3. Studies prior to this were confined to lunatic asylums in the US during the nineteenth century.
Jatinder Bains, ‘Race, culture and psychiatry: A history of transcultural psychiatry’, History of Psychiatry (2005), 16 (2), 139–54, on 139. Theories about the association between the ‘civilising process’ and insanity have a much longer history dating back to the nineteenth century, leading subsequently to late nineteenth-century ideas about the ‘inferior’ intelligence of primitive people within the context of social Darwinism.
See Ana Maria G Raimundo Oda et al., ‘Some origins of cross-cultural psychiatry’, History of Psychiatry (2005), 16 (2), 155–69.
Simon Dein and Kamaldeep Singh Bhui, ‘The crossroads of anthropology and epidemiology: Current research in cultural psychiatry in the UK’, Transcultural Psychiatry (2013), 50 (6), 769–91, on 771.
A. G. Mezey, ‘Psychiatric aspects of human migrations’, International Journal of Social Psychiatry (1960), 5, 245–60, on 245.
D. J. Smith, Racial Disadvantage in Britain (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977), cited in Littlewood and Lipsedge, Aliens and Alienists, p. 129.
Early international studies include: C. P. Collins, ‘Sickness absence in the three principal ethnic divisions of Singapore’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine (1962), 19, 116–22
and WHO, Health Aspects of Labour Migration: Report on a Working Group Convened by the Regional Office for Europe of the WHO, Algiers, 1973 (Copenhagen, WHO 1974).
Wayne Katon, Arthur Kleinman and Gary Rosen, ‘Depression and somatisa-tion: A review’, part 1 The American Journal of Medicine (1982), 72, 127–35, on 131.
Department of Health, Invisible Patients: Report of the Working Group on the Health of Health Professionals (2010), p. 7.
Kwame McKenzie, ‘Improving mental healthcare for ethnic minorities’, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2008), 14, 285–91, on 287.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2015 Ali Haggett
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Haggett, A. (2015). Special Cases: Sick Doctors and Ethnic Presentations of Psychological Illness. In: A History of Male Psychological Disorders in Britain, 1945–1980. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448880_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448880_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55626-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44888-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)