Seeking professional help: Etiology beliefs about mental illness across cultures

In the present study, the authors examined the contributions of cultural beliefs about the etiology of mental illness to the seeking of help from mental health professionals among college students in 4 cultural groups, European Americans, Chinese Americans, Hong Kong Chinese, and Mainland Chinese. Group differences were found in help-seeking history and likelihood, with European and Chinese Americans being more likely to seek help than Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese. Multiple-group path analysis showed that lay beliefs about causes of mental illness and prior help-seeking history significantly predicted help-seeking likelihood, which was related positively to environmental/hereditary causes but negatively to social-personal causes. Our findings demonstrate the importance of understanding help-seeking patterns within specific cultural contexts and the effects of Western influences on shaping help-seeking propensities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

The pretense of psychology as science: The myth of mental illness in Statu Nascendi

If I was profoundly shocked by the Varieties [of Religious Experience, by William James], that was not because some of the facts described in it were such as I would rather not hear about. They were, on the whole, amusing. Nor was it because I thought James was doing his work clumsily. I thought he did it very well. It was because the whole thing was a fraud.... Psychology... regarded as the science of the mind, is not a science. It is what “phrenology” was in the early nineteenth century, and astrology and alchemy in the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century: the fashionable scientific fraud of the age.... There were, I held, no merely moral actions, no merely political actions, and no merely economic actions. Every action was moral, political, and economic.     

The pretense of psychology as science: The myth of mental illness in Statu Nascendi

If I was profoundly shocked by the Varieties [of Religious Experience, by William James], that was not because some of the facts described in it were such as I would rather not hear about. They were, on the whole, amusing. Nor was it because I thought James was doing his work clumsily. I thought he did it very well. It was because the whole thing was a fraud.... Psychology... regarded as the science of the mind, is not a science. It is what “phrenology” was in the early nineteenth century, and astrology and alchemy in the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century: the fashionable scientific fraud of the age.... There were, I held, no merely moral actions, no merely political actions, and no merely economic actions. Every action was moral, political, and economic.     

The 1975 division 27 awards for distinguished contributions to community psychology and community mental health: Seymour B. Sarason

American Journal of Community Psychology -     

The 1975 division 27 awards for distinguished contributions to community psychology and community mental health: John C. Glidewell

American Journal of Community Psychology -     

The 1979 division 27 award for distinguished contributions to community psychology and community mental health: Emory L. Cowen

Summary The metaphor of the paper's title offers a framework for a brief summary. Effective wooing of primary prevention requires that we take seriously, and adhere to, its clear, sensible defining guidelines; systematize, and further develop, its generative base; use that base to guide the formulation of new primary prevention programs; further develop frameworks to promote informed choices of programs derecions from among many attractive possibilities; and be more hard-nosed as program evaluators. That type of courtship should improve our love life with — and perhaps even, science of — primary prevention in mental health. Editor's Note: Emory L. Cowen was honored at the 1979 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in New York, New York, on September 4, 1979, receiving the Division of Community Psychology Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community Psychology and Community Mental Health. The selection was made by an Awards Committee composed of all the past-Presidents of the Division. Dr. Cowen was introduced by Jack M. Chinsky of the University of Connecticut, and Julian Rappaport of the University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign.This paper bears some (superficial) resemblance to a talk given at division 27's Distinguished Contribution Award ceremony, during the 87th Annual APA Meetings, New York, N.Y., 9/4/79. This draft is surely lengthier, more convoluted,no more informative, and muchless fun than the spoken version. Conceivably, the main accomplishment of my incessant revisions will prove to be the significant incapacitation of 10 gifted typing fingers attached to the hands of Sharon DeVita — the prime initial victim of my obsessionality. To Sharon, who suffered the indignity and boredom of eternal retypings, my boundless gratitude for her patience, forbearance, and good cheer, well beyond the call of duty.Preparation of this paper was done under support of a grant from the NIMH Experimental and Special Training Branch (MH 14547-02-03), which the author acknowledges with gratitude.