Health ministry of republic of moldova the university of medicine and pharmacy nicolae testemiţanu

(ICD-10) 
from the WHO (
World Health Organization
) has had four revisions since 

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32 
1948, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 
(DSM-IV)
from the 
American Psychiatric Association has undergone four revisions since 1952. 
As in other areas of health, notions of mental health are gendered. 
Men and women think differently about their mental health and feeling 
of well-being, as it is shown by studies of psychiatric morbidity in the 
community and of patterns of helps-seeking behavior (Anson et al., 
1993). Women more often define problems as “illness” than do men, 
and health professionals are more likely to medicalise women’s 
problems than men’s (Jebali, 1995). 
The public perception of mental disorder is based in culturally 
constructed concepts of normality, abnormality, health and illness. In 
general, are mentally healthy in any given society, the persons who 
manage to find personal fulfillment while being integrated socially and 
economically into that society at whatever level suits them. People who 
find themselves unduly stressed or isolated by the norms and expecta-
tions of their social situation have to find acceptable means of expre-
ssing their mental distress; otherwise they will become more isolated or 
more stressed. 
According to Shorter (1990) the social historian of psychiatry must 
pursue three separate narratives: 
first,
that of underlying biology; 
se-
cond,
the story of the stress and life experiences of individual patients; 
third,
the story of changes in the models which the culture holds out for 
the communication of inner distress. 
The main diagnoses associated with women are depression, neuro-
sis, and eating disorders. 
Views on how to „treat” people with mental disorders vary accor-
ding to the position taken, by the proponents of these views, on what 
constitutes mental disorders. Those who view it as a medical problem 
will base their discussions on existing health care provision. Those who 
view it as a socio-economic problem will look for ways of changing 
social situations in order to provide more support and less stress for the 
individuals concerned. 
Others, of course, view the situation from a completely different 
perspective, one that is interested only in the negative effects on society 
caused by individuals who display antisocial conduct as a result of men-
tal disturbance. For the latter group, the discussion will revolve around 
the issue of public safety and the need for surveillance and protective 
custody for people with mental disorders. 

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33 
Early texts on the treatment of mental disorder show pictures of 
swinging chairs, of bloodletting and of (cold) baths as effective modes 
of treatment, but even these sometimes bizarre approaches were only 
available to a small minority of patients. In reality, there was very little 
attention from medical staff. For some asylum „inmates”, work and dis-
cipline were the main forms of therapy, while for others, it was cruel 
physical punishment and detention in substandard conditions. 
As medical science developed in the early part of the twentieth 
century, infection was commonly associated with mental disorder, and a 
variety of physical treatments were pioneered. These included the fol-
lowing: shock treatment, surgery, water therapy and the most generally 
used approach to therapy manual work. However, for the majority of 
people in the public health care system and psychiatry had little to offer 
patients before the „drug revolution” of the 1950 s. As we entered the 
twenty first century, medication has replaced physical restraint, surgery 
and psychotherapy as the main method of treatment in hospital.