Tagged: diagnosis

Opinion / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Social Welfare / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

Discussing the ‘obsession’ with childhood disorder labelling

In recent decades, we have too often passed the buck of social problems to children who lack the power to say no to stigmatizing psychiatric labels. Laura Batstra and Ernst Thoutenhoofd call for reflection on these non-evidence-based, ineffective and sometimes even harmful practices. The instability of labels Recently, a well-designed cohort study reported that nearly 40% of 213 toddlers classified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) no longer met the criteria for ASD at the age of 5-7 years. ‘Recovery’...

Opinion / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

You are what you swallow? Considering the moral implications of psychiatric diagnosis for children

It’s not easy to question things that have been life changing for some people. As more and more people seek or receive psychiatric diagnosis, it becomes a very personal thing to question its validity. When I wrote an opinion piece in 2023 suggesting moral implications associated with increasing psychiatric diagnosis of children, I felt nervous. Nervous of invalidating the experiences of others but also nervous of the implications of questioning medical hegemony without undermining the hard fought for systems of...

Science & Technology

Patient autonomy and the biomedical model

Recently, there have been many suggestions that a backlash against the unilateralism of the biological approach in medicine is on the brink. Perhaps, some suggest, patients have garnered some say in their treatment, even though many researchers suggest that modern medical practice strips patients’ rights to make their own decisions. But where ought the boundary between patient autonomy and doctor totalitarianism be? On the one hand, purely diagnostic, biomedical medicine that does not allow for patients’ own insight into their...

Science & Technology

If a depression begets depression, will the concept of mental illness be altered?

For the last several decades, depression rates have been on the rise at a rapid pace. At the same time, the economy was in a boom. Socioeconomic status is a variable that has been shown over and over again to affect the likelihood to experience depression; there is an inverse relationship between income/wealth and depression. If the economy was better a few years ago and depression rates were up, it is imperative that we think about what is happening and...

Science & Technology

Health insurance for millions more and the future of medicalization

A bill to extend health insurance to millions more Americans and to cut premiums and force coverage for pre-existing conditions for all Americans passed the house this week. President Obama will sign the bill today. At the Eastern Sociological Society conference in Boston this past weekend, I attended a panel on resistance to medicalization where Peter Conrad, who one might call the father of contemporary medicalization theory,  presented a new project on the medicalization of chronic pain. The overarching theme of...

Science & Technology

What does calling something a disorder do? the case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

By Dena T. Smith This week’s Science Times reported that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, (which causes the symptoms one might imagine, given the name of the condition) a set of symptoms with unidentified etiology, has been linked to a virus. This possible cause may potentially shed some light on the mysterious derivations of the syndrome, which many sufferers would like to see conceptualized as an illness or disease. While the story of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a fascinating and sometimes disturbing one, for sociologists,...