The social nature of mental illness / Len Bowers.

Originally published: 1998.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 200-210) and index.

1.Introduction --2. Deviance:-Classic labelling theory--Applications to mental illness: Scheff and Gove--Current status of deviancy theory--Deviance as difference from the norm--Crime as cover paradigm--Application of Lemert\'s theory to mental illness--Deviancy and relativity--Impact upon sociology--Scheff and the concept of residual rules--Some misunderstandings--Societal reaction as all powerful--Outcome of the Scheff /Gove debate--Recent empiricl studies--On being sane in insane places--Some origins of deviancy and labelling theory--Summary--3. Rules:- Social order--Rules as a unitary phenomenon--Wittgenstein on rules--Consequences of mistaken thinking about rules--Mental illness and rule breaking--Summary--4. Culture:- Importance of the philosophy of language--An example of philosophical confusion--Culture and experiences--Thinking and feeling among the Ifaluk--Individualism versus sociocentricity--Eskimos and snow--Cultural translation and context stripping--Universal diagnostic categories--Universality of diagnoses other than schizophrenia--Other competing perspectives--Cultural influence upon mental disorder--Ethnoepistemology and ethnotheories--Suffering and depression around the world--Summary--5. Diagnosis:- Diagnostic systems as cultural products--Does a diagnostic system imply an illness model?--Diagnoses, mechanisms and causation--Rigour, utility and pattern--Confusions about diagnosis and labelling theory--Stereotyping within the psychiatric system--Self image--Diagnostic terminology as dehumanising--Psychiatric boundaries--Value of diagnostic systems---Boyle and schizophrenia--Summary--6. History:- Temporal development of psychiatric diagnoses--Relativity versus continuity--Influence of concepts upon experience--Foucault and changing conceptions of mental illness--Psychiatric expansionism--Labelling and deviancy theory in the history of psychiatry--Moral treatment and concepts of insanity--Responsibility and mental illness--Turning- points and historical change--Summary--7. Politics:- The function of psychiatry--Explaining away moral problems--Ventilation of emotion--Mentally ill take the blame for social problems--Other possible functions of psychiatry--Marx, Freud and psychiatry--Mental health service users\' movement--Political repression--Psychiatry as a political movement or product--Summary--8. Illness:- A philosophical problem--Language and representation--Systematic ambiguity--Scientific and technical definitions--Language as action--Metaphors and mental illness--Mental illness as physiological disorder--Crop and blight--Illness and incapacitation--Evolutionary criteria--Responsibility and absolution--Insanity and rationality--Common features--Pros and cons of the illness paradigm--Linguistic analysis--Summary--9. Physiology:-Psychological malfunctioning--Relationship of words to neurological states--Empirical arguements denying physiological causation--A priori agruements denying physiological causation--Computer analogies--Brain correlates and causality--Disease status and physiological causation--Physiological hypothesis generation--Biopsychosocial aetiological accounts--Sociobiological influences--Physiological explanations and professional legitimacy--Summary--10. Social Construct:- Physiological cause a possibility--Positivism and the social sciences--Language and social construction--Consequences for psychiatry.

This text is a critical scrutiny of the issue of whether mental illness is a physiological brain disorder or a disorder that is socially defined.