Psychiatric Expansion and the Rise of Workplace Mental Health Initiatives

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the increasing surveillance of employee emotions and behaviours by groups of non-psychiatric professionals (for example, psychologists, therapists, and counsellors) in the neoliberal work environment; a process which it is argued represents a change in focus from the ‘happy’ to the ‘unhappy’ employee. Through a survey of the available critical research on workplace mental health initiatives it will be demonstrated that psychiatric discourse has become so powerful and omnipresent that it has changed the very understanding of what constitutes a ‘healthy’ subject, thereby increasing the chances of workers being pathologised as psychologically and biologically suspect individuals..