Neoliberalism and biopsychiatry: a marriage of convenience

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543678.013

12 - Neoliberalism and biopsychiatry: a marriage of convenience

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2009

Joanna Moncrieff

Edited by

Carl I. Cohen and

Sami Timimi

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Joanna Moncrieff: Affiliation:
Department of Mental Health Sciences University College London LondonUK
Carl I. Cohen: Affiliation:
SUNY Downstate Medical Center
Sami Timimi: Affiliation:
Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust

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Summary

Introduction

Since the end of the 1970s there has been a change in the nature and activity of institutional psychiatry. Neuroscience research, which aims to uncover the biological origins of psychiatric disorders, has burgeoned and flourished, gaining a high degree of credibility outside psychiatry as well as within (Cohen, 1993). In addition, psychiatry is no longer confined within the walls of an asylum, ministering to the severely disturbed, but now plies its wares to a widening proportion of the population. Use of psychiatric drugs has risen dramatically. In the UK, for example, prescriptions for antidepressants rose by 235% in the 10 years up to 2002 (National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2004). In the USA 11% of women and 5% of men now take an antidepressant drug (Stagnitti, 2005). A larger proportion of the general population are now willing to identify themselves as needing psychiatric help and psychiatry has become a more confident and biologically inclined profession.

These developments in psychiatry parallel profound social and economic changes, referred to here as “neoliberalism,” that have occurred to varying degrees throughout the world. The question I shall address in this chapter is whether these two developments are related. Does a newly invigorated biologically oriented psychiatry help to create the social and cultural milieu favoured by neoliberal policies? Have those policies in turn helped a certain view of psychiatry to become hegemonic?

Psychiatry and economics

Psychiatry has always had an intimate relationship with economics.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Liberatory Psychiatry
Philosophy, Politics and Mental Health
, pp. 235 - 256

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543678.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

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