Psychiatrization of Resistance: The Co-option of Consumer, Survivor, and Ex-patient Movements in the Global South.

This article examines contemporary examples of psychiatrization as a tool of disciplinary control and repression, focusing on new research on the co-option of consumer/survivor/ex-patient movements within the Global South. Here, we understand psychiatrization as (1) the process of imposing certain interpretive limits on states of difference and distress and (2) the conceptualization of treatment and recovery through the teleological notion of normalcy. By interpreting difference solely in psychiatric terms, psychiatrization functions as a tool of disciplinary control in both domestic and international contexts by reterritorializing efforts to resist hegemonic norms and political institutions of gendered and racialized oppression, colonialism, and imperialism. After setting out our understanding of psychiatrization as a political process in the sense that it enacts a particular "ontological politics", one that foregrounds psychiatric interpretations of difference and dissent to the exclusion of other possible meanings, we examine the reach and complexity of psychiatrization in the suppression of political and social movements that attempt to resist oppressive norms and institutions. We then present new research within the consumer/survivor/ex-patient and psychosocial disability movements in the Global South to show how psychiatrization can thwart activist's aims of transforming how we view both the end goals of mental health treatment and the political valence of mental distress.

The Cultural Politics of Mental Illness: Toward a Rights-Based Approach to Global Mental Health.

The movement for global mental health (MGMH) has raised awareness about the paucity of mental health services, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In response, policies and programs have been developed by the World Health Organization and by the Lancet Commission on global mental health, among other organizations. These policy initiatives and programs, while recognizing the importance of being responsive to local needs and culture, are based on Western biomedical conceptualizations of emotional distress. In the paper, we discuss how a rights-based approach can promote the voice and participation of people with lived experience into the MGMH. We argue that a human rights framework can be enhanced by incorporating the conceptual approaches of critical inquiry and community mental health. We also discuss how rights-based approaches and service-user activism can productively reconfigure Western psychiatric conceptualizations of distress and provide both a moral and empirical justification for a paradigm shift within the MGMH.

Drivers of and Solutions for the Overuse of Antidepressant Medication in Pediatric Populations.

Children in the United States and internationally are increasingly being diagnosed with depression and related psychiatric conditions and a recent study found that antidepressant (ADM) use in children and adolescents rose substantially in youth cohorts in five Western countries from 2005 to 2012. However, there has been ongoing controversy over the effectiveness and safety of ADM use in children, including concerns about ADM increasing suicidality and self-harm. In addition to the increase in the diagnosis of depression, commercially driven off-label prescriptions have been cited as a significant reason for high rates of pediatric ADM prescribing. In this commentary, we discuss two drivers of the overuse of ADM, both of which are products of an increasingly medicalized approach to mental health: 1) the demand for mental health and depression screening in youth, despite the lack of evidence to support it, and 2) the renewed momentum of the Global Mental Health Movement and concomitant calls to "scale up" the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Using the lens of institutional corruption, we identify the ways in which both guild and financial conflicts of interest create obstacles to rational prescribing practices in pediatric populations and offer suggestions for reform.