Professional paper
Mental health on the market: Biopower, psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry
Igor Petričević
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This paper problematizes the biomedical model of mental disorders, pharmacotherapy and questions the role of psychiatry in spreading the definition of mental disorders in the context of the medicalization of society which is characterized by the treatment of nonmedical as medical problems. The paper points to the dimensions of entanglement of mental health and the market in a neoliberal capitalist society with an idea that the pharmaceutical industry
is an important agent in the medicalization of everyday life which enables a maximization of profit on a deregulated drug market. The relationship between the normal and the abnormal, the social power and the background of psychiatric diagnoses are also dealt
with. The exercise of the function of social control on behalf of psychiatry and the ways in which these processes are related to a market logic of neoliberalism are seen through the prism of a
biopower concept.
Keywords
biopower; pharmacotherapy; madness; medicalization; norm; psychiatry; social control
Hrčak ID:
105812
URI
Publication date:
1.5.2013.
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