Description
Book SynopsisIn an era in which the medicalization of mental health troubles and treatment has been settled for several decades, little is known about how this biomedical framework affects practitioners’ experiences. This book explores how practitioners make sense of a field that has shifted rapidly in just a few decades.
Trade Review"This is a compelling project. Too often sociologists assume that the blueprint laid out by the DSM is equivalent to practice. This colors our discussions of medicalization in general, perhaps leading us to overstate its reach and breadth and obscuring the ways it is negotiated in practice. By delving more deeply into these practices – and the reasoning behind them – Smith’s research has great potential to bring nuance to the discussion of medicalization. The book wants to go beneath our general discussions of medicalization to see how it plays out in practice. Through a comparison of three groups of clinicians, she reveals the distinct dilemmas clinicians face, as well as their responses to the prevailing paradigm in practice. These play out in often unanticipated ways."
-- Owen Whooley * author of Knowledge in the Time of Cholera: The Struggle over American Medicine in the Nineteenth Ce *
"Dena Smith provides us with an analysis of the medicalization of mental disorder, and its impact on the conceptions and treatments in psychiatry. Basing her work on 43 interviews with mental health professionals, Smith provides new insights on the role of medicalized perspectives on psychiatric work.” -- Peter Conrad * Brandeis University *
"Highly recommended." * Choice *
Table of ContentsFrom meaning-making to medicalization
Practitioner portraits and pathways to practice
The promise of 'imperfect communication' and the 'prison' of rigid categorization : the DSM in practice
Etiological considerations and the tools of the trade : the role of medication and talk therapy in practice
The consequences of the biomedical model for practice and practitioners : psychodynamic therapy in a biomedical world
Conclusion : the dangling conversation : ambiguity in mental health practice
