عنوان

"SHANGRI-LABORATORY":

TL9w92r769

انگلیسی

"SHANGRI-LABORATORY":

[Thesis]

Mehra, Akhil

PLACE AND PSYCHIATRIC PUBLIC HEALTH IN HAWAII, 1939-1963

Watkins, Elizabeth

UCSF

2011

UCSF

2011

Using twentieth century Hawaii as a case study, this study examines how place concepts were used in thinking about mental health. Psychoanalysis, the dominant model of American clinical psychiatry after World War II, neglected place in favor of a more universal theory of early childhood events. In Hawaii, however, the establishment of the public mental health system contrasted with this psychoanalytic worldview. Instead of psychoanalysts, sociologists at the University of Hawaii had an unusual amount of influence in theories about mental illness and public health measures. From the 1920s to the 1950s sociology in Hawaii was heavily oriented towards a mental health of human relationships with specific places and the immediate external environment. In addition, sociologists envisioned Hawaii as an exotic "laboratory" -- a unique menagerie of stunning geographical features and polyglot inhabitants fit for scientific apprehension. Place ideas colored conceptions of public mental health problems such as juvenile delinquency, child abandonment, and conflicts within the family. Moreover, particular relationships with place and the environment were investigated in Hawaii's ethnic sub-populations, such as native Hawaiians, and immigrant Japanese, among others.

Mehra, Akhil

Watkins, Elizabeth

UCSF

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y