A critique of medicalisation: three instances.

A critique of medicalisation: three instances. Anthropol Med. 2017 Dec;24(3):248-260 Authors: Ryang S Abstract By briefly exploring three different examples where the existence of mental illness and developmental delay has been presumed, this paper sheds light on the way what Foucault calls the emergence of a regime of truth, i.e. where something that does not exist is made to exist through the construction of a system of truth around it. The first example concerns the direct marketing of pharmaceutical products to consumers in the US, the second the use of psychology in semi-post-Cold War Korea, and the third the persisting authority of psychology in the treatment of the developmentally delayed. While these instances are not innately connected, looking at these as part of the process by which the authoritative knowledge is established will help us understand, albeit partially, the mechanism by which mental illness penetrates our lives as truth, and how this regime of truth is supported by the authority of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, what Foucault calls the 'psy-function,' reinforcing the medicalisation of our lives. PMID: 29283037 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Anthropology and Medicine - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Anthropol Med Source Type: research