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Introduction: Thinking Critically About Mental Illness

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Psychiatric Hegemony

Abstract

Cohen discusses the urgency for critical and Marxist analysis in the sociology of mental health, arguing that most scholarship on the current mental illness “epidemic” has failed to consider psychiatry as a fundamentally political project within capitalist society. Following a review of the latest research evidence, the sociologist concludes that there remains no scientific proof for the existence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or any other “mental disorder.” Instead, the expansion of the business of mental health and the psychiatric discourse over the past 35 years to hegemonic status can only be fully comprehended with reference to the rise of neoliberal society and the ideological control of western populations through the increasing “psychiatrisation” of personal and public life.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Bruce M. Z. Cohen

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  1. Bruce M. Z. Cohen
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Cohen, B.M.Z. (2016). Introduction: Thinking Critically About Mental Illness. In: Psychiatric Hegemony. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46051-6_1

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