Main description:

This book critiques the use of psychiatric labelling and psychiatric narratives in everyday areas of institutional and social life across the globe. It engages an interpretive sociology, emphasising the medial and individual everyday practices of medicalisation, and their role in establishing and diffusing conceptions of mental (ab)normality. The reconstruction of psychiatric narratives is currently taking place in multiple contexts, many of which are no longer strictly psychiatric. On the one hand, psychiatric narratives now pervade contemporary public discourses and institutions though advertising, news and internet sites. On the other hand, professionals like social workers, teachers, counsellors, disability advisors, lawyers, nurses and/or health insurance staff dealing with psychiatric narratives are becoming servants of the psychiatric discourse within "troubled person's industries". Abstract academic categories get turned into concrete aggrieved victims of these categorisations and academic formulas turned into individual narratives. To receive support it seems, one must be labelled.

The practice-oriented micro-sociological field with which this volume is concerned has only recently begun to integrate itself into public and academic debates regarding medicalisation and the social role of psychiatry. Discussions on the evolution and expansion of official diagnoses within academia, and society in general, frequently overlook the individualised roles of psychiatric diagnoses and the experiences of those involved and affected by these processes, an oversight which this volume seeks to both highlight and address.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Introduction; Martin Harbusch & Alison Fixsen.- Chapter 2. "Psychiatrisation" of school children: Secondary school teachers' beliefs and practices on mental health and illness; Sami Timimi & Zoe Timimi.- Chapter 3. Governing emotions in schools; Roberto Mcleay and Darren Powell.- Chapter 4. The ADHD "Industry": The psychiatrisation of the school system in its labour market context; Charles Marley David Fryer.- Chapter 4. The ADHD "Industry": The psychiatrisation of the school system in its labour market context; Charles Marley David Fryer.- Chapter 6. Psychiatric expansion and the rise of workplace mental health initiatives; Bruce M.S. Cohen.- Chapter 7. Dramas of medicalisation in everyday social network life; Martin Harbusch & Michael Dellwing.- Chapter 7. Dramas of medicalisation in everyday social network life; Martin Harbusch & Michael Dellwing.- Chapter 9. The psychiatric surveillance of pregnant women and new mothers.- Emma Tseris.- Chapter 10. Experience, morality and accountability: Shaping the landscape of "sex addiction" through lived experience and professional knowledge; Emmanuelle Larocque, Baptiste Brossard & Dahlia Namian.- Chapter 11. Psychiatric categories and technologies behind the wire: Case notes from the north of Ireland; Ruari Santiago-McBride.- Chapter 12. A harmless sort of trouble: Community policing in rural areas and the narrative construction of "troubled" and "troublesome" individuals; Aaron Bielejewski.- Chapter 13. Cannabis: Creating troubled persons ... and treating them?; Michelle Newhart & William Dolphin.- Chapter 14. New markets in deviance, professional power and practice in post-institutional Ireland; Damien Brennan.- Chapter 15. The cultural construction of diagnostic categories in psychiatric training and practice in New Zealand; Charles Nuckolls.- Chapter 16. "I was so relieved when the doctor told me I had schizophrenia" - Identity and sense-making of psychiatric labels; Stefan Sjoestroem.- Chapter 17. Conclusions.