Medicalization and Mental Health Issues/ Socio Final

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

• Mood disorder triggered by low winter sunlight.
• More common in women and city-dwellers.
• Symptoms include: altered appetite, weight changes, fatigue, and anxiety.

Medicalization

• Process where aspects of life become redefined as medical problems needing intervention.
• Redefining problems through medical language, frameworks, and interventions.
• Can lead to the creation or extension of diagnostic labels.
• Example: Depression/sadness in the past related to lobotomy.

Michel Foucault

• Connected knowledge and power.

Protest Diagnosis

• Example of medicalization.
• Institutional racism leads to medicalizing outrage, frustration, and anger.
• Targeting of Black individuals.

Overend (2020) and Medicalization

• Used post-structural theory, including Foucault's ideas, to analyze medicalization.
• Questioned the difference between normal and pathological behaviors.
• Noted a threshold for what constitutes pain or happiness.

Institutional Racism

• Form of power produced through social structures that categorize and control individuals based on fabricated differences.
• Examples from 1920s-1950s vs. 1960s-1970s: withdrawn to suspicious, apathetic to agitated, underproductive to paranoid, depressed to narcissistic, hostile.

Homosexuality

• Same-sex attraction.
• Conversion therapy (an example of medicalization).
• Inclusion as a diagnosis in the DSM (psychiatric manual).

Social Determinants of Health

• Non-medical factors influencing health outcomes.
• Positive factors: income, social protection, quality healthcare, public health infrastructure.
• Negative factors: environmental toxins, job insecurity, food insecurity, war, and discrimination.

Canadian Healthcare

• Primarily publicly funded (approximately 70%).
• Medical Care Act (1966): Extended universal healthcare to all provinces.
• Canada Health Act (1984): Stipulations for provincial health insurance.

Canada Health Act (1984)

• Stipulations for provincial health insurance.
• 5 key components: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, accessibility.

Thomas Douglas

• NDP leader, considered the "father of socialized medicine."
• Introduced the first provincial hospital insurance program in Saskatchewan.

Portability (Canada Health Act)

• Ability to move between provinces and territories with healthcare access.
• Allows for continued coverage during temporary absences (vacation, etc.).

Public Administration (Canada Health Act)

• Provincial and territorial healthcare plans managed by public, not-for-profit agencies.

Comprehensiveness (Canada Health Act)

• Health insurance plans covering all hospital, physician, or dentist services.

Universality (Canada Health Act)

• All residents have equal access to publicly funded healthcare.
• Universal health coverage ensures everyone can access needed quality services without financial strain.

Accessibility (Canada Health Act)

• Reasonable access to insured hospital and physician services.
• Prioritizes enabling access.

Neoliberalism and Healthcare Access

• Governance philosophy emphasizing deregulation, free markets, and individual responsibility.
• Impacts healthcare through corporate wellness programs and private insurance.
• Concerns about increasing inequality in access.

Neoliberalism vs. Conservatism

• Neoliberalism is more market-driven and globalist; conservatism emphasizes tradition and social order.

Thatcher and Neoliberalism

• Margaret Thatcher (British Prime Minister 1979-1990) is associated with the rise of neoliberalism.
• Implemented policies reflecting neoliberal principles (free markets, privatization, deregulation).

Political Science

• Study of power dynamics in societies, focusing on the state.

Types of Government

• Monarchies: Rule by hereditary succession (e.g., British Royal Family).
• Democracies: Power based on citizen voting (e.g., Canadian government).
• Dictatorships: Absolute rule by a single person or group (e.g., North Korea).

Geopolitics

• Study of relationships between state power and geography.

Sovereignty

• State's capacity to govern its territory and make decisions within its jurisdiction.

Nation

• Group of people connected by shared culture, religion, language, and territory.

Nation-State

• Sovereign political entity governing a defined territory inhabited by a nation.

Contemporary Nationalism

• Reactive nationalism focused on defense against external threats to identity.

Nationalism

• Identification with and devotion to the nation.

Diaspora

• Group dispersed from their homeland. (e.g., Indigenous People).

Sikh Histories (1460-1690)

• Sikh community formed under gurus, facing Mughal persecution.

Sikh Histories (1799-1849)

• Sikh Empire ruled Punjab and surrounding regions.

Sikh Histories (1849-1947)

• Sikh community under British rule in Punjab or in diasporic communities.

Partition (1947)

• Division of Punjab between India and Pakistan, causing significant violence and displacement.

Political Alienation (1970)

• Tension between Akali Dal (Sikh political party) and Indian Congress Party over centralized power.

Operation Blue Star (1984)

• Indian military's siege of the Golden Temple during a Sikh separatist movement.

Akali Dal

• Sikh political party in India.

Air India Bombings (1985)

• Terrorist attack against the Indian state resulting in numerous deaths.

Parade Controversies (2000-2010)

• Sikh nationalist imagery in parades sparked backlash from Canadian and Indian governments.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar Murder (2023)

• Killing of the Sikh community leader, leading to diplomatic tensions between Canada and India.

Right-Wing Hindu Nationalist

• Ideology promoting Hindu identity as central to the nation.

Neverson (2020) Sports and Nationalism

• Examined the political dimensions of sports, often obscured by myths.

Sport and Nationalism

• Socialization into nationality through sport;
• Major sporting events often have competing geopolitical implications, incorporating diplomacy, and national supremacy.

Diplomacy vs. National Supremacy

• Diplomacy involves engagement; national supremacy asserts dominance and self-interest over others.

Davidson and Park, Sport and Nationalism

• Sports events create collective effervescence, reinforcing group identity.

Collective Effervescence

• Intense energy and emotional unity experienced during collective rituals or experiences. This phenomenon was theorized by Emile Durkheim.

Religion

• Substantive definition: Focuses on beliefs about higher powers, realms beyond the earthly, and afterlives.
• Functional definition: Focuses on the role religion plays in uniting people and providing common beliefs.

Émile Durkheim and Religion

• Religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices concerning sacred things, uniting followers into a moral community.

Polytheistic

• Many gods.

Monotheistic

• One god.

Measuring Religiosity

• Identifying and measuring how people exhibit religious beliefs and practices.

Coleman (2018) Episodic and Dispositional Faith

• Different ways of experiencing religiosity: believing without belonging, or belonging without believing.

Secularization

• Decline of religious beliefs and practices, often accompanying modernization.

Chaplaincy

• Providing formal religious services in secular institutions (army, prisons, hospitals).

Laïcité vs. Laicism

• Laïcité: Emphasis on national identity over religious identity and a strict separation of state and religion (Ex: Quebec).
• Laicism: Separation of religion and state, but with more flexibility (Ex: Turkey). (Canada leans towards multiculturalism).

Urban Sociology

• Study of distinctive urban life forms.

Urbanization

• Increasing proportion of a population residing in cities.

Davidson and Park, Urbanization

• Also the growing power of cities in cultural, political, and economic contexts.

Blase Attitude

• Detachment and lack of interest due to overexposure and familiarity with urban life.

Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life"

• Metropolis fosters individuality and freedom, but also leads to alienation and detachment.
• Highlighted the impact of diverse interactions on social awareness and thought.

Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life"

• Urban environments shape social behavior, emphasizing impersonality in cities.
• Urbanism fosters social isolation and integration, including cultural exchange opportunities and alienation.

Émile Durkheim, Organic Solidarity

• Social cohesion in complex, modern societies based on interdependency and specialization.

Three Urban Processes

• Global cities: Crucial nodes in the global system, influencing economics, politics, and culture.
• Segregation: Spatial and social separation based on factors like race, class, or ethnicity.
• Gentrification: Transformation of urban neighborhoods by higher income residents and investment, often displacing lower-income residents.

Mechanical Solidarity (Durkheim)

• Social cohesion in premodern societies based on shared traditions and experiences, mostly in rural communities.

Organic Solidarity (Durkheim)

• Social cohesion in modern societies through interdependence and specialization of tasks.

Durkheim and Winter in the City

• Snowstorms magnify interdependence (organic solidarity); encouraging collectivism, and shared experience.
• Social solidarity can also increase through winter seasonal festivals.
• Challenges the idea of individual independence and highlights that individual action is embedded within various social forces (age, disability, gender).

Nicol Neverson and Politics of Sports Methodology

• Uses cultural studies to examine meanings and representations of hockey and broader notions of social and national identity.

Why did Michel Foucault critique biomedical gaze?

• Critique on how doctors interpret patients' stories through their established perspective.

Overend and Horwitz, Wakefield, medicalization of sadness

• Diagnosis of sadness expands, leading to broader medical diagnoses

Sociology of Health

• Sub-discipline examining health and illness in society.

SAD Diagnosis Criteria

• Recurrence in consecutive winters, absence of other explanations, remission in spring.

Wirz-Justice, Circadian Clock Theory

• Mismatch between internal clocks and modern environments, such as electric lighting, can contribute to SAD.

Biological Theories/SAD Causes

• Circadian clock disruption from modern environments (e.g., electric lighting).
• Imbalance of serotonin and melatonin production influencing sleep, mood, and appetite.

Demedicalization

• Resistance to and removal of medical authority in everyday life.

Armstrong (2010) and Demedicalization

• Neurodiversity as a means to de-stigmatize and normalize behavioral differences.

Winter's Encouragement

• Encourages reflection, inwardness, and sometimes release from routines.

Greek Philosopher Hippocrates

• Recognized a connection between seasonal changes and mood, including melancholia in winter.

Horwitz and Wakefield, Sadness

• Distinction between reactive and endogenous sadness, highlighting when sadness is normal or pathological. (Normal vs disorded)

Unintended Consequences of Medicalization

• Increased false positives (misdiagnosis of normal sadness).
• Alterations to cultural understandings of common sadness.

DSM Sadness Symptoms

• Requires 5 out of 9 symptoms lasting two weeks, including: depressed mood, diminished interest, appetite/weight changes, sleep disruption, psychomotor agitation, fatigue, guilt/worthlessness, focus problems, recurrent death/suicide thoughts.

Importance of Sadness

• Essential human emotion, crucial for appreciating joy, reflecting, empathizing, and connecting with others; can lead to creativity.

Interaction Rituals

• Mundane but meaningful interactions that express respect between people.

Marx and Engels on Winter

• Conditions highlight the need for collective action and challenge the focus on individual responsibility in modern societies.

Collective Practices

• Essential for fostering and maintaining shared group identities.