Schizophrenia is a mental disease that has been part of human society for thousands of years, while not seen as one for much of what one would call the modern eras of human history it has come to pass in recent years that schizophrenia came into prominence as a recognized disease. Keeping this in mind it is evident that the medical field has changed quite a bit over the years to allow this to happen but nonetheless when we look at how the medical field has evolved in their treatment of people with schizophrenia from the 17th century to the 21st century it becomes quite interesting and in many cases jarring how much has changed. The specific way of finding out how much has changed lies mainly in analyzing how the medical field has changed in their doctrine of the disease and the change in medical treatments for it. There may of course be the inevitable arguments that although the widely accepted public view has changed toward schizophrenia that there still is indeed quite a bit of negative practices that could also be directly correlated to medical practices of earlier history. This may be true on some level but I feel that there is actual concrete reasoning and logic to our practices in our day and age even if the treatment may seem cruel as compared to earlier centuries where medical practices were based on nothing but ease and predetermined beliefs.
By examining several texts and old literature over schizophrenia and comparing it to modern day texts I hope to find a correlation toward either an evolution or continuation of medical practice toward schizophrenics. Through researching this question I hope to find out how much the medical field, and as an extension humanity, has truly evolved and progressed over the centuries as compared to how much is merely what we imagined to have been progress in the field through examining the change in schizophrenic treatment.
The first link is an e-book which I feel will fill in the certain gaps that I may or may not have over what exactly entails schizophrenia and may help me understand why a treatment may or may not have been deemed worth use and why. The second is a brief history of schizophrenia and I believe something that will help in finding the roots of schizophrenia and some more background over the disease and the evolution in treatment. The third is a bit of an odd pick but I feel something to explore and possibly expand on considering that medical treatment in this day and age has a lot to do with drug treatment.
All in all I hope by looking into schizophrenia and the evolution of medical treatment toward it I may find something I hadn’t thought or looked at before that may open my eyes to future endeavors and questions of interest.
Alejandro,
ReplyDeleteYour prospectus gives your topic/research question a bit more focus. I like how you seem to have shifted from "attitude" toward S. and more focused on the treatment (or maybe I just misread your initial exploration). Regardless, even though this is a large topic, I think you may be able to manage it as long as you keep your focus on medical and historical discourses. As I noted when you came up with this topic, I strongly consider you look into a text by Foucault called "The History of Madness" and see if he speaks about schizophrenia specifically.
I'm still not quite sure where exactly you are going, but you are getting closer here and I look forward to your further comments and research work. What are some counterarguments to your proposal? Or are you still not sure if you are going to argue that our treatment is continuous or that treatment has progressed?