Public Promotion and Mental health Policy in Saskatchewan, 1920-1975
Date
1990
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Most policy literature, particularly much recent material on the sociology of
psychiatry, tends to gloss over significant questions surrounding public
opinion and public demand. Specifically, what are the origins of public
support for social policy initiatives and how are publics introduced and
habituated to new service forms that arise with changes to social policy?
These questions are the object of an investigation into the role of the
psychiatric professions in generating political support and consumptive
demand for services attendant with the transformation of psychiatric services
into its present community mental health modality. This transformation
entailed the medicalization of psychiatric work and an extemalization of the
locus of service provision. Psychiatry, formerly an administrative specialty
that was centered in custodial asylums, was converted into a range of
community services based on a medical model that promised to deliver
prevention of mental disorders. This transformation was a dual process that
involved changes not only to service provision but also service consumption
and thus required an overall social reconstitution of insanity into medical
categories--termed collectively, mental illness. Evidence from approximately
600 articles reported in major Saskatchewan newspapers illustrates that the
Canadian Mental Health Association functioned as a primary vehicle for the
promotion of a psychiatric worldview in the public forum. It shows the
important role these professions played in attempting to generate and shape
public opinion to achieve their goals.
Description
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Citation
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Sociology
Program
Sociology