Psychiatrization of Resistance: The Co-option of Consumer, Survivor, and Ex-patient Movements in the Global South

Abstract

This article examines contemporary examples of psychiatrization as a tool of disciplinary control and repression, focusing on new research on the co-option of consumer/survivor/ex-patient movements within the Global South. Here, we understand psychiatrization as (1) the process of imposing certain interpretive limits on states of difference and distress and (2) the conceptualization of treatment and recovery through the teleological notion of normalcy. By interpreting difference solely in psychiatric terms, psychiatrization functions as a tool of disciplinary control in both domestic and international contexts by reterritorializing efforts to resist hegemonic norms and political institutions of gendered and racialized oppression, colonialism, and imperialism. After setting out our understanding of psychiatrization as a political process in the sense that it enacts a particular “ontological politics”, one that foregrounds psychiatric interpretations of difference and dissent to the exclusion of other possible meanings, we examine the reach and complexity of psychiatrization in the suppression of political and social movements that attempt to resist oppressive norms and institutions. We then present new research within the consumer/survivor/ex-patient and psychosocial disability movements in the Global South to show how psychiatrization can thwart activist's aims of transforming how we view both the end goals of mental health treatment and the political valence of mental distress.

De-psychiatrizing our own research work

“…The fundamental challenge faced by researchers committed to working against, or despite, the dominant paradigm is how to break the self-perpetuating mechanism that, in the end, annexes and psychiatrizes all advancements in knowledge, including practices and epistemologies that have nothing to do with the biomedical approach to begin with. Here I particularly mean research, theoretical concepts and a variety of collective, non-medical, self-organized responses to madness and distress, developed by individuals and organizations of people who have been on the receiving end of psychiatric “care.” Personally, I am more familiar with the developments in highly psychiatrized Western societies, but similar processes of co-optation can be seen in the movement for global mental health that targets countries of the Global South (Logan and Karter, 2022 ) and “merges psychiatric knowledge with the idea of a ‘social movement”' (Fey and Mills, 2021 :193). Survivor research (Sweeney, 2016a , b ) and other work that explicitly aims at de-psychiatrization—informed by our experiences and knowledge gained through the de-psychiatrization of our own biographies – continues to be selectively employed to extend and supplement the biomedical paradigm with “lived-experience” perspectives.…”

“…The contested presumption of the biomedical nature of madness and distress remains implicit in the work of many critical psychiatry scholars who seek to engage in “less psychiatrizing forms of psychosocial support” (von Peter et al, 2021 ) or routinely assume the existence of “apolitical or irreducible distress” (Logan and Karter, 2022 ). This kind of subtle but persistent othering subverts efforts to eradicate the psychiatrization of human experience as a matter of principle (LeFrançois et al, 2013 ; Burstow et al, 2014 ; Russo and Sweeney, 2016 ; Beresford and Russo, 2021 ), regardless of its spread—and despite circumstances that can turn “mental illness” into an acceptable explanatory framework that legitimizes medical “solutions” to the complexities of living.…”

“…This kind of subtle but persistent othering subverts efforts to eradicate the psychiatrization of human experience as a matter of principle (LeFrançois et al, 2013 ; Burstow et al, 2014 ; Russo and Sweeney, 2016 ; Beresford and Russo, 2021 ), regardless of its spread—and despite circumstances that can turn “mental illness” into an acceptable explanatory framework that legitimizes medical “solutions” to the complexities of living. The latter trend is acknowledged as “bottom up psychiatrization” (Beeker et al, 2021 ; Logan and Karter, 2022 ) but overlooks the many intersections of knowledge-making processes in which top-down and bottom-up psychiatrization merge. Given that knowledge-production takes place at precisely these junctures, it is crucial to illuminate that blank space and render the research labor visible.…”

Trazos para cartografiar las violencias recientes en Chile

“…Desde esta descripción inicial, en que la psiquiatrización opera como un mecanismo top-down (desde el poder hacia quienes le resisten), el concepto se ha enriquecido y complejizado. Más allá de las sociedades autoritarias, también es posible identificar este mecanismo en las opresiones de tipo sexo-género, en los procesos de racialización, el colonialismo e imperialismo; a estas, habría que agregar el vector bottom-up, como estrategia de visibilización social de dichas opresiones apelando a sus efectos sobre la psiquis individual (Logan & Karter, 2022). En cualquiera de sus dos direcciones, la atribución patológica cobra preeminencia respecto a los elementos políticos y sociales que inevitablemente trae aparejados.…”

Potknięcie. Etnograficznie o psychiatryzacji dzieci i młodzieży w kontekście adopcji zamkniętej w Polsce

“…Witeska-Młynarczyk 2022a). Szeroko opisane są różnice pomiędzy procesami zachodzącymi w krajach globalnej Północy i Południa (Mills 2013;Logan, Karter 2022).…”