Disorders of the Collective Mental State

Bostock, WW; Ecs, Bostock

doi:10.4172/2161-0487.1000331

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

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“…How can psychiatric research and practise respond to this challenge? On a conceptual level, psychiatry needs to embrace (the not so new) position that mental states have a collective dimension (72,73) and devote substantially more attention to the problem of how individual mental health is dynamically constrained and affected by interactions between individual minds and brains in a social space. It also requires psychiatric research to be increasingly interlinked with relevant research domains in the social sciences and in media and communication studies.…”

Section: Facing the Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

Global Adversities, the Media, and Mental Health

Kesner

Horáček

2022

Front. Psychiatry

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Global communities are currently confronted with a number of complex problems and threats, the reality of which is amplified by the media. These environmental and socio-political stressors have been accompanied by the spread of problematic psychological and behavioural tendencies, such as the growing polarisation of opinions and values, online radicalisation and extremism, deepening xenophobia and nationalism, the proliferation of irrational beliefs and conspiracy theories, and resistance to rational public policy measures. Here we argue that although they fall outside the scope of psychopathology, they nevertheless currently constitute a major challenge for psychiatry as a research domain and a clinical practise. To substantiate this claim, we outline the mechanisms by which media-transmitted stressors impact mental well-being and possibly psychopathology. The common denominator of these global problems and the media's construction of reality is the increase in uncertainty, unpredictability, and uncontrollability, which prompts defensive responding and, in predisposed individuals, functions as a potent source of chronic stress. These contribute to cognitive inflexibility, a strong predisposing factor for the development of rigid beliefs and attitudes, which to varying degrees underlie the adverse psychological and behavioural tendencies mentioned above. We suggest that the tightening of beliefs and ideas that is the result of cognitive rigidity may correspond to the clinical characteristics of induced delusional disorder. This can be seen as a (ultimately maladaptive) defensive strategy for coping with a high degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. We conclude by briefly outlining the possible ways in which psychiatry can face this challenge.

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Section: Facing the Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

Global Adversities, the Media, and Mental Health

Kesner

Horáček

2022

Front. Psychiatry

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Mental Ill-Health and the Epidemiology of Representations

Kesner

2018

Front. Psychiatry

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One of major challenges facing contemporary psychiatry is the insufficient grasp of relationship between individual and collective mental pathologies. A long tradition of diagnosing “mental illness” of society—exemplified by Erich Fromm—stands apart from approach of contemporary social psychiatry and is not perceived as relevant for psychiatric discourse. In this Perspective article, I argue that it is possible to uphold the idea of a supra-individual dimension to mental health, while avoiding the obvious pitfalls involved in categorical diagnosing of society as suffering from mental illness. I argue for an extended notion of public mental ill-health, which goes beyond the quantitative understanding of mental health as an aggregate of individual diseased minds captured in statistics, and which can be conceived as a dynamic, emergent property resulting from interactions of individual brains/minds in social space. Such a notion, in turn, presents a challenge of how to account for the interfacing between individual minds/brains and the collective mental phenomena. A suitable theoretical framework is provided by the notion of epidemiology of representations, originally formulated by cognitive anthropologist Dan Sperber. Within this framework, it is possible to highlight the role of public (material) representations in inter-individual transfer of mental representations and mental states. It is a suitable conceptual platform to explain how the troubling experiences with causal or mediating role on mental health, to a significant degree arise through a person's direct interaction with material representations and participation in collective mental states, again generated by material representations.

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Disorders of the Collective Mental State

Cited by 2 publications

References 15 publications

Global Adversities, the Media, and Mental Health

Global Adversities, the Media, and Mental Health

Mental Ill-Health and the Epidemiology of Representations

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