Disorders Made to Order
Brendan Koerner’s “Disorders Made to Order” highlights how pharmaceutical companies shape the creation and promotion of new mental health disorders, while Carlat discusses how pharmaceutical companies influence doctor’s prescribing practices. Discuss ethical considerations for both articles and explore how this might impact someone who is suffering from mental distress. What I am really hoping to see is a bit of critical thinking about how these two articles lend insight into how so many people who suffer mentally remain un-helped. What are the implications of these practices for individuals who are diagnosed with these disorders and how might this related to power dynamics within the medical industry?
Reflect on the lecture about how a critical analysis of structural conditions help to understand mental suffering, including suicide trends (e.g. Durheim). Try to think about how the kinds of rapid societal changes discussed in the lecture might contribute to feelings of disconnection today. How does this align with your own experiences or observations in society?
Write two paragraphs and please use the lecture below
0 minutes 1 second
Hey everybody, welcome to a lecture about well, we\’re going to do a little theory, look at some stuff of kind of kind of connects a little more deeply to the social context and we\’re going to move into a conversation with our readings about what it looks like to seek treatment.
0:19
0 minutes 19 seconds
So we\’ve talked a lot about how mental health and illness is socially constructed, talked about history.
0:25
0 minutes 25 seconds
I really, you know, sort of grounded you in a critical perspective of, you know, a lot of things we take for granted as normal or a truth of some kind and hopefully raise questions about, you know, the political and economic context associated with what happens in the psychiatric community, for example.
0:43
0 minutes 43 seconds
So, you know, all of this sort of leads us to, well, what happens when somebody needs help?
0:49
0 minutes 49 seconds
What does that look like?
0:51
0 minutes 51 seconds
How does that, how does that sit in our culture?
0:54
0 minutes 54 seconds
So your readings are going to take a critical perspective and teach you a little bit about how the sort of the backside or even a, a dark side, if you will, of you know, how medications become the sort of only, only way to talk about or treat mental illness anymore.
1:13
1 minute 13 seconds
So we do a little sociology.
1:15
1 minute 15 seconds
We\’re going to connect some theory to social structure and things like that.
1:18
1 minute 18 seconds
So I really want to introduce you to one of our major sociological theorists, Emil Durkheim, and he\’s a classic theorist.
1:28
1 minute 28 seconds
You probably learn about him if you ever take a social theory class.
17:53
17 minutes 53 seconds
And so those kinds of things sort of make sense.
17:56
17 minutes 56 seconds
And we can also see it very clearly in the research.
17:59
17 minutes 59 seconds
the United States spends less on social welfare than all of Western Europe.
18:04
18 minutes 4 seconds
And while our rates of suicide climb, rates in Western Europe have been falling.
18:10
18 minutes 10 seconds
So Western European nations also invest more into their most vulnerable folks.
18:17
18 minutes 17 seconds
They have a very substantial focus on social welfare that’s committed to making sure that their people have a right to life without poverty or a right to healthcare as an actual human right versus a privilege like it is here.
18:33
18 minutes 33 seconds
So here, you know, Healthcare is viewed as a privilege, not a right.
18:38
18 minutes 38 seconds
We have shockingly high rates of poverty and extreme poverty, again in the wealthiest nation.
18:45
18 minutes 45 seconds
So we can see a direct correlation to how a country invests in its most vulnerable people and suicide rates.
18:54
18 minutes 54 seconds
It\’s good sociology, right?
18:55
18 minutes 55 seconds
So all of this connects to how we decide to help.
18:58
18 minutes 58 seconds
So thinking back to earlier lectures where I, I just, you know, like to repeat over and over about how important it is to look critically at how we define a social problem.
19:09
19 minutes 9 seconds
How we define a problem shapes what we decide to do about it, and the reasons we have to look at things like the politics and economics behind a particular social problem and who gets to define it is because those definitions guide our decisions about how to problem solve.
19:28
19 minutes 28 seconds
So if we define mental suffering as a medical condition, our efforts to help are going to reflect that.
19:36
19 minutes 36 seconds
If we include a conversation about the structure and condition of our society and the role of inequality in an in in our culture, then what we decide to do about it will also look very different.
19:47
19 minutes 47 seconds
So the political and economic context of mental distress is just really important.
19:54
19 minutes 54 seconds
And we, you know, we sometimes talk about medicalizing as depoliticizing, where you sort of take the politics out of the out of the discussion.
20:03
20 minutes 3 seconds
And so, you know, when you do that, when you say that, you know, depression is simply a chemical imbalance, We\’ve stopped talking about how our society is set up in a way that isolates us and hurts us on a variety of levels.
20:20
20 minutes 20 seconds
And how social inequality on every level, not just income inequality, but around LGBTQ issues, you know, race and ethnicity, all of the things that we study in sociology, all of those contribute to suicide rates.
20:37
20 minutes 37 seconds
So your readings this week are going to kind of look at the dark side of treatment or what I consider the dark side of treatment and how definitions and data and knowledge.
20:46
20 minutes 46 seconds
I mean, we talked a lot about how we get to the DSM and where knowledge gets created and socially constructed.
20:52
20 minutes 52 seconds
And so we\’re going to look at how those definition definitions and knowledge and how that social construction is less focused on helping and more focused on expanding the role of big pharma and the drug market.
21:07
21 minutes 7 seconds
So kind of a grim topic, but super important to understand.
21:10
21 minutes 10 seconds
So try to channel Durkheim as you read this week and his ideas about mental distress and think critically about what you learn in the reading.
21:18
21 minutes 18 seconds
So I hope this was useful to you and thank you for being here with me.
21:23
21 minutes 23 seconds
And I hope you enjoy the readings.
21:25
21 minutes 25 seconds
Quite interesting.
21:26
21 minutes 26 seconds
Looking forward to reading your responses.
21:28
21 minutes 28 seconds
Take care, everybody.
Paper Format: APA
Answer preview to Disorders Made to Order
APA
300 WORDS
