Bernice A. Pescosolido Sigrun Olafsdottir Indiana University
This dissertation research will examine how and why mental health has been medicalized, specifically how global ideas and national context interact to create a mental health landscape within and across societies. Understanding these processes is crucial, given that societies increasingly rely on the medical profession to provide solutions to wide array of problems, including the control of social behaviour as manifested in mental health problems. Sociologists have theorized about this process as medicalization, but these theories were developed for and applied to American society. This is problematic, since this definition fails to take into account countervailing actors that interact with the medical profession, such as the state and insurers. This dissertation uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to most effectively answer its research question. Specifically, data from the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation Development) and WHO (World Health Organization) will be used to examine the levels of medicalization in 21 Western, industrialized societies and to test the effects of globalization and welfare state measures on the medicalization of mental health. In addition, in-depth interviews with key players in the mental health field in Iceland will be completed to generate further hypotheses regarding processes of medicalization and the interaction between global ideas and the welfare state within one national setting. This study addresses the ways in which macro-theories of globalization and the welfare state and theories within medical sociology can inform one another to increase our understanding of how social organization and structures affect individual lives. Specifically, by reconceptualizing the notion of medicalization in a comparative perspective, this research provides a broader application of theories of medicalization. Furthermore, it advances the welfare state literature by concentrating on one of the largest, yet least theorized, domains of the welfare state: spending on health. Finally, it advances our understanding of globalization processes by providing a link between global processes and the local actors embedded in these processes.
Broader Impacts: The research systematically addresses questions related to the causes and consequences of medicalization. Specifically, it will provide a more accurate understanding of the experiences of individuals facing mental health problems across different societies. The core focus on the interplay between the state and professions can better inform intervention strategies at the individual, national, and international levels in understanding and responding to mental health problems.
