Abstract
This chapter takes a critical sociological perspective regarding mental health as a potentially dominant discourse for understanding and addressing human concerns. The cultural looping effects of mental health diagnoses are considered, along with “self-help” as a source of “biopower” and governmentality. Psychology’s logic and individualizing focus is critiqued through the writing of Jan deVos. The writings of Eva Illouz, Frank Furedi, and Nikolas Rose will inform how medicalizing mental health discourse is taken up as both an individualizing and socializing phenomenon. The role of web resources and other media-accessible details regarding “mental health” are also critically examined. The aim of this chapter is to present clienthood as something potentially socially constructed prior to people seeing counsellors, while also conveying expectations of counselling associated with medicalization.
With respect to psychologisation, one should not focus on the supposed real life behind it, but in reality show how life gets psychologised.
(De Vos 2012: 10)
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Strong, T. (2017). Individualizing and Socializing the Mental Health Monoculture. In: Medicalizing Counselling. Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56699-3_5
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