Search

When discussed in the context of diagnosing or medicating children, psychiatrization is usually portrayed as a more or less monolithic top-down process, which, according to some, enables a child's right to health, while for others is a form of child abuse. This article challenges these conceptualizations in two steps: First, it draws on available literature on psychiatrization (including its top-down and bottom-up operations, and its ideological and material aspects), and its relationship to various psy-practices, and wider processes of (bio) medicalization, psychologization and reification. Second, using two detailed vignettes from ethnographic research with children and youth in Poland, the article demonstrates that children and youth are not necessarily passive recipients of psychiatrization as they themselves navigate, appropriate, resist, and transform top-down influences. While one vignette details a child's more or less open resistance to psychiatrization through their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder label, the other vignette shows young people embracing and positively identifying with bio and psy-knowledge in relation to depression. However, both vignettes show how children and youth make psychiatrization meaningful as it shapes their lifeworlds, with them sometimes becoming agents of psychiatrization themselves. Our data illustrate the nuances of psychiatrization of, with and by children, and we draw on this to complexify existing literature and framings of psychiatrization.

Framed as being in response to terrorist attacks and concerns about religious bias in some English schools, 'British Values' (BV) curriculum policy forms part of the British Government's Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015. This includes a Duty on teachers in England to actively promote British Values to deter students from radicalisation. This paper, first, traces the history of Britishness in the curriculum to reveal a prevalence of nationalistic, colonial values. Next, an ensemble of recent policies and speeches focusing on British Values is analysed, using a psycho-political approach informed by anti-colonial scholarship. Finally, we interrogate two key critiques of the British Values curriculum discourse: the universality of British Values globally, and concerns over the securitisation of education. Findings indicate that the constitution of white British supremacist subjectivities operate through curriculum as a defence mechanism against perceived threats to white privilege, by normalising a racialised state-controlled social order. The focus is on 'British' values, but the analytic framework and findings have wider global significance.

A growing body of research, largely from the global North, and particularly from North America, highlights the increasing psychiatrisation, medicalisation and psychologisation of children and childhood, and suggests that schools and educators play a key role in these processes. This increasing diffusion of psy-expertise within educational spaces signifies a cultural shift that has profound effects on teacher and student subjectivity, and on institutional and professional practices. Educators in many countries are said to be on the 'front-line' in identifying mental health issues, recommending treatment pathways, and sometimes helping to administer psychopharmaceuticals. The alacrity with which educators engage in these practices varies internationally, with reported occurrence being much higher in the United States and Canada, compared to the United Kingdom, where there is a lack of research. Drawing upon a case study in a UK primary school, this paper makes an original and timely contribution to research into UK teacher's perceptions of inclusion in relation to social, emotional and behavioural difficulties and, in particular, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, as they navigate the interface of psychology and education. Contrary to some previous research, the educators in this study viewed the distribution of psychopharmaceuticals negatively, and showed a preference for psychotherapeutic approaches to inclusion. This research provides much needed empirical findings to a growing but largely theoretically informed body of research exploring whether, and if so then how, educators are implicated in the mobilisation of psy-expertise within children's lives.

This article reports on the findings from a small-scale co-produced qualitative study on experiences of distress caused by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Inspired by the emerging interdisciplinary field of Mad Studies, the study is novel and unique in two ways. First, it prioritises social understanding and interpretation of madness and distress. Second, an emphasis is placed on experiential knowledge. Beyond interviews with 20 people who experienced distress due to political conflict, this included contextualisation of the study in the knowledge generated through survivor research and within the field of Mad Studies. Study findings highlight the social causes and consequences of distress caused by conflict, such as war-related violence, gender-based violence, experiences of poverty and corruption. Participants stressed the importance of safety and support within their own home, mutual and supportive relationships with their families, friends, other people who experienced distress, the broader community and opportunities to do everyday activities they enjoy. In terms of professional support, the findings suggest that poverty alleviation and protection of people's right to self-determination through access to human rights advocacy and representation may be as relevant as non-coercive community-based services. This indicates that support for distress caused by political conflict need not be different from any other support for people who experience distress. Emphasis should be placed on survivor-run initiatives and non-coercive, community-based support which addresses social causes of distress and enables people to exercise self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, a long continuing battle began to find out more about Government record-keeping on the deaths of disabled people claiming benefits. Drawing on a timeline of evidence co-produced with disabled people, we analyse how deaths related to the benefits system are an outcome of slow violence, where both the delay between policies and their harmful effects, as well as the more active use of delay tactics, are central to how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) weaponise time as a strategy to avoid accountability and deny justice. DWP reviews into deaths are an under-researched yet significant focus because they are (supposedly) tools through which the DWP investigates the harms of its own policies, and yet, they are designed and carried out in a way that systemically invisibilise state accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on interviews with members of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) Guidelines for Mental, Neurological and Substance Use Disorders, this article adds empirical depth to understanding the contingent and strategic nature of universality in relation to mental health. Differently from debating whether or not mental health is global, the article outlines the people, ideas, and processes involved in making it global. Thematic analysis of interviews carried out with nine (out of 21) members of the original mhGAP GDG identified six intersecting strategies that enable the construction of universality in global mental health (GMH): 1) processes and practices of assembling expertise; 2) decisions on what counts as evidence; 3) framing cultural relativism as nihilistic; 4) the delaying of complexity to prioritize action; 5) the narration of tensions as technical rather than epistemological; and 6) the ascription of messiness to local contexts rather than to processes of standardization. Interviews showed that differently from the public-facing consensus often presented in GMH, GDG members hold contrasting and contingent understandings of the nature of universality in relation to mental health diagnoses and interventions. Thus, the universality of mental health achieved through the mhGAP Guidelines is partial and temporary, requiring continuous (re)iteration. The article uses empirical data to show nuance, complexity, and multi-dimensionality where binary thinking sometimes dominates, and to make links across arguments 'for' and 'against' global mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Prevent Strategy tasks the British education sector with preventing radicalisation and extremism. It defines extremism as opposition to fundamental British Values and requires schools to promote these values and refer students and staff believed to be vulnerable to radicalisation. Little research examining the enactment of the Prevent and British Values curriculum has included students. To fill this gap, we investigated how students, teachers and Prevent/British Values trainers engage with this curriculum by conducting individual interviews in two multicultural secondary schools in England, framing the study in recent work on colour-blindness. We found that whilst multiculturalism was celebrated, discussion about everyday structural racism was avoided. Critical thinking was performed strategically, and classrooms were securitised as sites for identifying potential safeguarding referrals. Moral education, colour-blindness and safeguarding intersected to negate racialised experiences, whilst exposing students and teachers to racialised Prevent referrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]