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A History of Male Psychological Disorders in Britain, 1945–1980Conclusion

A History of Male Psychological Disorders in Britain, 1945–1980: Conclusion [Julian Tudor Hart, a retired GP, widely respected for his contribution to general practice and epidemiological research, recaptured his memories of ‘going to the doctor’ in a paper published in an edited collection in 2000. Drawing upon a lifetime of experience, he emphasised the importance of the social context of disease. Citing a British study on clinical consultations undertaken in 1975, he reminded readers that this research had indicated ’85 per cent of all final diagnoses were reached by simply listening to patients’ stories’.1 Recalling over fifty years of experience of treating patients who presented with ill-defined symptoms with no detectable organic disease, he eloquently articulated much of what has been described throughout this book. Somatic labels, he noted, were often dependent on the current ‘fashion’. In his lifetime, hysterical paralysis had become chronic, post-viral fatigue, while ill-defined abdominal pains were consecutively labelled ‘grumbling’ appendix, spastic colon and irritable bowel syndrome. When it came to psychological illness, Tudor Hart remarked stridently: ‘It is hard for later generations to appreciate the hostility of almost all British GPs in the first two thirds of the [twentieth] century to any psychiatric diagnoses other than the gross institutionalised end-stage psychoses they had seen as students.’2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A History of Male Psychological Disorders in Britain, 1945–1980Conclusion

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2015
ISBN
978-1-137-55626-4
Pages
144 –151
DOI
10.1057/9781137448880_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Julian Tudor Hart, a retired GP, widely respected for his contribution to general practice and epidemiological research, recaptured his memories of ‘going to the doctor’ in a paper published in an edited collection in 2000. Drawing upon a lifetime of experience, he emphasised the importance of the social context of disease. Citing a British study on clinical consultations undertaken in 1975, he reminded readers that this research had indicated ’85 per cent of all final diagnoses were reached by simply listening to patients’ stories’.1 Recalling over fifty years of experience of treating patients who presented with ill-defined symptoms with no detectable organic disease, he eloquently articulated much of what has been described throughout this book. Somatic labels, he noted, were often dependent on the current ‘fashion’. In his lifetime, hysterical paralysis had become chronic, post-viral fatigue, while ill-defined abdominal pains were consecutively labelled ‘grumbling’ appendix, spastic colon and irritable bowel syndrome. When it came to psychological illness, Tudor Hart remarked stridently: ‘It is hard for later generations to appreciate the hostility of almost all British GPs in the first two thirds of the [twentieth] century to any psychiatric diagnoses other than the gross institutionalised end-stage psychoses they had seen as students.’2]

Published: Feb 1, 2016

Keywords: Irritable Bowel Syndrome; Sickness Absence; Biomedical Model; Psychological Illness; Primary Care Training

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