Jennifer Radden

• University of Massachusetts Boston

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and...

We provide here the first bottom‐up review of the lived experience of depression, co‐written by experts by experience and academics. First‐person accounts within and outside the medical field were screened and discussed in collaborative workshops involving numerous individuals with lived experience of depression, family members and carers, represen...

This volume is a welcome contribution to the philosophical and scientific study of delusion. Its chapters are written by leading researchers in the study of delusion, and they cover a wide range of topics including the ones that have been largely underexplored, such as the historical or normative issues on delusion."

This book presents new philosophical work on delusions and their impact on everyday human behavior. It explores a cluster of related topics at the intersection of philosophy of mind and psychiatry, while also charting the historical development of work on delusions. Within psychiatry, there are several disputes about the nature and origin of delus...

Feelings associated with grief are regularly described as painful, but in what respect are they to be understood as pain? The acute pain of easily located tissue damage has long been the paradigm of pain in scientific and philosophical analysis, a dominance serving to obscure features the pain of grief might share not only with chronic pain but wit...

Because some forms of self-starvation such as hunger striking are exempt from attributions of pathology, and due to incomplete understanding of its etiology, anorexia nervosa (AN) is and must presently be defined by psychological criteria as well as behavioral and bodily measures. Although opaque, typical motivational frames of mind in AN lack the...

Introduction ICD-11's diagnostic definition possesses conceptual lacunae and normative implications calling for further attention. Method Assumptions underlying it and their ethical implications, are examined employing philosophical analysis; particularly, these are (1) changes to eliminate implications of voluntary agency to caloric restriction;...

“Suffering,” “pain,” “hurt,” “distress,” “agony,” and like terms point to a category of profound moral significance. It encompasses in every case states of consciousness , when these are the product of afflictions both felt as somatic and felt as psychological. We suffer when we are subject to painful ailments and injuries; we also suffer from bad...

We must remain open to revising and expanding the important but incompletely understood philosophical categories of agency and responsibility in light of what can be learned from atypical states and behaviour. A reflection on images – here, Goya's great Madhouse scene, and photographs of Mad Pride events since the 1980s – is shown to provide assist...

Anorexia nervosa, or restrictive anorexia, is one of a collection of disorders that includes bulimia and binging and purging syndromes. Because it is common (it is the second most common disorder diagnosed in adolescent girls, for example); hard to treat; and sometimes fatal, anorexia raises urgent ethical and societal concerns. When adequate and p...

Szasz’s influence through the intellectual history of individual responsibility is powerful. If mental illness is a myth, then ethical consequences follow, although some ethical developments have ontological, very Szaszian, implications. Szaszian writing is replete with his ethical conception of individual responsibility, emphasizing rights, freedo...

This anthology takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining the legacy of the controversial psychiatrist and libertarian philosopher Thomas Szasz (1920-2012), whose mordant criticism of psychiatry challenged the very concept of mental illness and the practice of coercive psychiatric treatment and some tenets of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy....

Psychiatry has a habit of ignoring its past, which is understandable but, in some instances, a mistake. It is my contention that some of the lacunae about mood disorder in today’s psychiatric understanding and treatment may be illuminated by the medical lore captured in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). The implications of the present analysis...

The first decades of the 21st century have seen increasing dissatisfaction with the diagnostic psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSMs). The aim of the present discussion is to identify one source of these problems within the history of medicine, using melancholy and syphilis as examples. Coinci...

Although employed throughout health-related rhetoric and research today, prevention it is an ambiguous and complicated category when applied to mental and behavioral health. It is analyzed here, along with four ethical issues arising when public health preventative methods and goals involve mental health: (i) age of intervention; (ii) resource prio...

In the ongoing controversy over how much regulation and standardization to impose on clinical practice and research, it is not surprising that the activity of psychotherapy supervision should be swept up in the drive for uniformity. The managers amongst us want to regulate and institutionalize all aspects of practice. In opposition, many clinicians...

Among the ideas and themes in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) with apparent bearing on the treatment of depression in our own times, four are the subject of the present chapter. First, these herbal and other remedies were to be taken as part of a broader regimen of which no single part could be omitted. The regulation of exercise, fresh air,...

This paper is a preliminary look at what public health might look like when applied to the distinctive challenges that involve mental and behavioral disorders. These challenges are practical and methodological, but also ethical. An apparent worldwide epidemic of depression, with high costs in morbidity and mortality, has become the concern of healt...

Richard Mullen and Grant Gillett (2014) decry the oversimplifications that accompany ‘doxastic’ analyses of delusion analogizing them to belief states; particularly, they object to the recent elevation to the status of paradigmatic the ordinary beliefs often understood, in Bayesian terms, as probabilistic estimates of empirical facts. Such an appro...

This discussion is about the moods characteristic of depressive and manic states. Moods are distinguished from the emotions they often accompany, and the relationship between these less and more cognitive, and seemingly less and more intentional, states is provided preliminary clarification. Epistemic deficiencies identified here, when combined wit...

Adshead's recognition that only when taken together can the many different conceptions of justice accommodate what is called for in the particularly demanding setting of forensic mental health care, is to be applauded. Each must be honoured and built into the systems of assessment and treatment that are the tasks of the forensic psychiatrist, she d...

Somogy Varga’s Discussion of the shared meanings that link descriptions of melancholia from past eras with those of depressive states in our own times is a compelling reminder of the depth and interest to be found in the history of medicine. He brings new insights to the disagreement between those who find an unproblematic continuity between the ea...

My response to the preceding essays begins with some preliminaries about my terminology, approach, and conception of rationality as a regulative ideal. I then comment on the Murphy's discussion about normal religious belief and religious delusions, and on causal assumptions challenged by Langdon's folies à deux. Responding to Gerrans's imagination‐...

“Suffering,” “pain,” “hurt,” “distress,” “agony,” and like terms point to a category of profound moral significance. It encompasses in every case states of consciousness, when these are the product of afflictions both somatic and psychological. We suffer when we are subject to painful ailments and injuries; we also suffer from bad luck and all the...

This paper explores the two-factor theoretical model currently widely used to provide an explanatory analysis of the delusions that regularly accompany neurological disease or damage. The model hypothesizes a combination of an experiential factor – a strange or untoward experience – and a cognitive factor, such as an impairment of reasoning. The tw...

This paper explores the two-factor theoretical model currently widely used to provide an explanatory analysis of the delusions that regularly accompany neurological disease or damage. The model hypothesizes a combination of an experiential factor a strange or untoward experience and a cognitive factor, such as an impairment of reasoning. The two-fa...

One might expect that VIPs-individuals with wealth, fame, or power-would typically receive excellent care when treated for psychiatric disorders. Often, this is the case, but paradoxically, VIP status may compromise the quality of psychiatric treatment. In this article, we present four case examples, representing disguised amalgamations of actual c...

Those in mental health-related consumer movements have made clear their demands for humane treatment and basic civil rights, an end to stigma and discrimination, and a chance to participate in their own recovery. But theorizing about the politics of recognition, 'recognition rights' and epistemic justice, suggests that they also have a stake in the...

This article examines Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and the ways multiple selves have been depicted or implicated in some recent philosophical discussions. It considers recent approaches to the concept of self and suggests that none of them rule out the possibility of multiple selves. It contends that the 1998 work of Carol Rovane is perhaps...

Spanning twenty-four centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation...

Delusions play a fundamental role in the history of psychology, philosophy and culture, dividing not only the mad from the sane but reason from unreason. Yet the very nature and extent of delusions are poorly understood. What are delusions? How do they differ from everyday errors or mistaken beliefs? Are they scientific categories? In this superb,...

Marga Reimer argues that treatment compliance in patients who are without any, or complete, insight into psychotic symptoms may be neither particularly abnormal nor entirely unreasonable. In broad sympathy with these conclusions, I wish only to add a couple of ancillary observations and some historical context. Reimer's discussion can be placed alo...

Drawing on the role morality developed in previous applications of virtue ethics to professional practice, The Virtuous Psychiatrist shows that the ethical practice of psychiatry depends on the character of the practitioner. The book is built upon three key tenets: ethics is important to any professional practice, including psychiatry; the settings...

This chapter places psychiatric ethics within professional and biomedical ethics more generally, and introduces the “role morality” notion: that some ethical imperatives derive from particular social roles. Some differences between psychiatry and other medical practices are illustrated through three issues: questions of patient autonomy, rules gove...

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and...

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and...

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and...

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and...

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and...

This book explores the inter-disciplinary field of the philosophy of psychiatry. The contributors define this exciting field and highlight the philosophical assumptions and issues that underlie psychiatric theory and practice, the category of mental disorder, and rationales for its social, clinical, and legal treatment. As a branch of medicine and...

The character-focused approach known as virtue ethics is especially well suited to understanding and promoting ethical psychiatric practice. Virtues are stable dispositions and responses attributed to character, and a virtue-based ethics is one in which people's selves or characters are at the center of moral assessment. In this discussion by a cli...

Suzanne Phillips and Monique Boivin provide us with a sympathetic and compelling account of how the various elements of Hildegard’s sophisticated amalgam of ritual, magic, religion, dietary and other medical remedies, caring, and community, formed a seamless cure for Sigewiza’s affliction. Whether Hildgard’s approach reflects an early instance of t...

Data indicate the ubiquity and rapid increase of depression wherever war, want and social upheaval are found. The goal of this paper is to clarify such claims and draw conceptual distinctions separating the depressive states that are pathological from those that are normal and normative responses to misfortune. I do so by appeal to early modern wri...

When a patient or patient's family presents a psychiatrist with a gift, the clinician is challenged to maintain appropriate professional boundaries but have the flexibility to respond with warmth and appreciation. The psychiatrist must consider such factors as the intention of the gift, its value to the patient, and the anticipated effect of accept...

Working Virtue is the first substantial collective study of virtue theory and contemporary moral problems. Leading figures in ethical theory and applied ethics discuss topics in bioethics, professional ethics, ethics of the family, law, interpersonal ethics, and the emotions. Virtue ethics is centrally concerned with character traits or virtues and...

When applied to the psychiatrist, the technical expert model contains particular limitations and hazards. In addition to the traits shared by all ethical purveyors of technical and, increasingly technological, expertise, it is argued here, the practitioner in psychiatry will need to possess moral virtue—and virtues. And to the extent that advances...

This unique resource examines schizophrenia from a philosophical point of view, and will appeal to every reader who wants to better understand this major mental illness, providing unique insights into the 'experience' of schizophrenia.

The practice of involuntarily medicating defendants and prisoners for the judicial purposes of trial or punishment raises several ethical concerns, of which two are discussed with reference to recent U.S. court decisions (the Weston, Singleton, and Sell cases): their effect on legal principles and individual rights, such as the liberty right agains...

Personal identity is a philosophical and psychological concept of great complexity whose theoretical ambiguities add to the confusion surrounding the contested condition now entitled dissociative identity disorder.Although fundamental skepticism continues over questions of validity, recent research on this disorder has clarified risk factors and re...

This resource brings together philosophers and psychiatrists to explore the conceptual issues raised by this increasingly common illness. Drawing on a variety of philosophers, the authors explore the nature of personal identity in dementia, showing how the lives and selfhood of people with dementia can be enhanced by attention to their psychosocial...

Both the professional code of conduct required in the practice of psychiatry, and the broader set of moral and ethical problems distinctive to, or at least magnified by, the mental health care setting are reviewed here. Some perennial aspects of mental disorder and its cultural history are introduced, together with problems resultant from recent sc...

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 357-359 In describing his four cases, Lloyd Wells (2003) throws out a challenge. He asks his readers to recognize similarities between their own more ordinary self-identity and the discontinuous narrative and seeming absence of a steady authorial subject resulting from disorders such as depression, s...

The philosophical positions known as libertarianism or liberalism, and paternalism or parentalism, in their application to treatment refusals are outlined. The author then discusses recent public policy governing the alleged right to refuse psychotropic medication and draws attention to conceptual issues raised by such a right. These issues include...

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 63-66 I AM IN SUBSTANTIAL AGREEMENT with many of the conclusions David Brendel draws in his thoughtful discussion. Misleading language aside, I particularly applaud his use of my plea for ontological descriptivism to support clinical practice, which respects, as he puts it, the subjectively "melancho...

The theoretical implications of equating the melancholic states of past eras with today's depression are explored. These include the presuppositions of the descriptive psychiatry so influential in twentieth century classification, which attempts to identify and describe mental disorders without reference to underlying causes. It also includes claim...