Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness
by Roy Richard Grinker
On This Page
Description
"A compassionate and eye-opening examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody's Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma-from the eighteenth century, through America's major wars, and into today's high-tech economy. show more Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family's four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather's analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter's experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Nobody's Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma. The preeminent historian of medicine, Sander Gilman, calls Nobody's Normal "the most important work on stigma in more than half a century.""-- show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
I think this book is an important look into the cultural causes of stigma, but I found the book to be lacking in a clearly expressed central thesis. As I read this book (and even now that I've finished reading it), I felt that I would be unable to give an answer to anybody who asked me "so what's that book about?" Which is a shame, because I think the ideas in this book are important.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
W. W. Norton & Company
47 works; 2 members
Author Information
9+ Works 467 Members
Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and the Human Sciences and Director of the Institute for Ethnographic Research at George Washington University
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 139
- Popularity
- 229,438
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.67)
- Languages
- English, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
