A Kind of Collective Freezing-Out: How Helping Professionals’ Regulatory Bodies Create “Incompetence” and Increase Distress

Abstract

This edited volume is an anthology of institutional ethnography (IE) inquiries into psychiatry--the first ever to be written. It focuses on a large variety of different geographic locations and constitutes a major contribution to anti/critical psychiatry, as well as institutional ethnography. Themes include the DSM, the use and protection of problematic psychiatric research, the penetration of psychiatry into the workplace. Adding depth and breath, the contributors, while all are schooled in IE, come from a large variety of walks of life, authors including: academics, psychiatric survivors, investigative reporters, activists, nurses, artists, and lawyers--each bringing their own unique expertise/standpoint to bear. The result is an intellectually rigorous book, contributions to several disciplines, ammunition for activism, and a compelling read that cannot be put down. Introduction to the project : IE researchers take on psychiatry / Bonnie Burstow -- Stopping CAMH : an activist IE inquiry / Bonnie Burstow and Simon Adam -- A kind of collective freezing out : how helping professionals' regulatory bodies create "incompetence" and increase distress / Chris Chapman, Joanne Azevedo, Rebecca Ballen, and Jennifer Poole -- Spirituality : a participatory planning process / Lauren J. Tenney in consultation with Celia Brown, Kathryn Cascio, Angela Cerio, and Beth Grundfest-Frigeri -- Operation ASD : philanthrocapitalism, spectumization, and the role of the parent / Mary Jean Hande, Sharry Taylor, and Eric Zorn -- Interrogating the rights discourse and knowledge-making regimes of the "Movement for global mental health" / Sonya L. Jakubec and Janet M. Rankin -- Pathologizing military trauma : how service members, veterans, and those who care about them fall prey to institutional capture and the DSM / Lauren Spring -- The caring professions, not so caring? : an analysis of bullying and distress in the academy / Jemma Tosh and Sarah Golightley -- Creating the better workplace in our minds : workplace "mental health" and the reframing of social problems as psychiatric issues / Rob Wipond and Sonya Jakubec -- Lawyering for the mad : social organization of legal representation for involuntary-admission cases in Poland / Agnieszka Doll -- By any other name : an exploration of the academic development of torture and its links to the military and psychiatry / Efrat Gold -- The afterword : Where have we been? ; What have we found out? ; Where do we go from here? / Bonnie Burstow.