Open AccessQuantifying the quiet epidemic
Author(s) -
Duncan Wilson
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
history of the human sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.269
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1461-720X
pISSN - 0952-6951
DOI - 10.1177/0952695114536715
Subject(s) - dementia , jurisdiction , rating scale , psychology , welfare , quiet , scale (ratio) , field (mathematics) , psychiatry , state (computer science) , disease , medicine , political science , law , developmental psychology , geography , computer science , pathology , physics , cartography , mathematics , quantum mechanics , algorithm , pure mathematics
During the late 20 th century numerical rating scales became central to the diagnosis of dementia and helped transform attitudes about its causes and prevalence. Concentrating largely on the development and use of the Blessed Dementia Scale, I argue that rating scales served professional ends during the 1960s and 1970s. They helped old age psychiatrists establish jurisdiction over conditions such as dementia and present their field as a vital component of the welfare state, where they argued that 'reliable modes of diagnosis' were vital to the allocation of resources. I show how these arguments appealed to politicians, funding bodies and patient groups, who agreed that dementia was a distinct disease and claimed research on its causes and prevention should be designated 'top priority'. But I also show that worries about the replacement of clinical acumen with technical and depersonalized methods, which could conceivably be applied by anyone, led psychiatrists to stress that rating scales had their limits and could be used only by trained experts.