The Medicalization of Mental Disorder

Abstract

Medicalization occurs when previously nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of an illness or disorder. After setting the historical context for how certain forms of deviant behavior became defined and treated as medical and psychiatric problems, we examine three more recent instances of medicalization. First is the growth of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from a children’s disorder to a lifespan disorder, which highlights medicalization through the expansion of an existing medical category. Second, we discuss the emergence of social anxiety disorder (SAD) as a common diagnosis, focusing on how a pharmaceutical company initially marketed shyness and social anxiety as a disorder and then advertised Paxil as its preferred treatment. Third, we consider the debate about whether to remove the bereavement exclusion from the diagnostic criteria for depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, V (DSM-V), which would make normal grief a basis for psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.