Editorial: Mental Illness, Mental Health, and Cultural Analytic Science

Abstract

This special issue is dedicated to an examination of serious mental illness and its treatment. The authors of the lead articles, suggest that behavior analytic approaches to treatment have been largely abandoned in favor of psychopharmacological intervention, mostly for nonscientific reasons rooted in professional competition and corporate profits. The commentaries on their papers by others in related fields are quite varied, and elaborate a number of perspectives on the issues. The authors of the lead papers then respond to those commentaries. The materials included in this issue discuss intervention in serious mental disorders largely in terms of medication or highly structured behavior analytic approaches. As the contributions in this issue make clear, strong arguments can be made that neither universal prescription of marginally powerful, often aversive, and potentially dangerous drugs, nor widespread application of tightly structured token economies, is an ideal strategy for helping persons with psychotic disorders to live safe and fulfilling lives in the contemporary world. Such work would be an important step beyond bemoaning the current, admittedly discouraging situation, but of course would not negate the structural political and economic realities discussed by many of the authors in this issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)