Children's Sense of Self in Relation to Clinical Processes: Portraits of Pharmaceutical Transformation

Abstract

Elizabeth Carpenter-SongThis article presents in-depth accounts of pharmaceutical transformation from the perspective of two children diagnosed with behavioral and emotional disorders. These portraits provide the basis for an examination of the complex interrelation between self and clinical processes. Narrative data were collected in the context of a 13-month anthropological study of the lived experiences of children diagnosed with behavioral and emotional disorders and their families living in the northeastern United States. Participating families (N 5 20) were from diverse racial/ethnic (African American, Euro-American, and Latino) and socioeconomic backgrounds. Psychiatric diagnoses and pharmaceuticals present tangible constraints in the lives of children that call attention to otherwise fluid and ephemeral self processes. These accounts suggest that psychiatric diagnoses and psychotropic medications present dilemmas for children's developing sense of self, revealing limitations to biopsychiatric ''pharmaceutical promises.'' [children, self processes, subjective experience, psychiatric disorder, pharmaceuticals] ''I can't handle my own self without the medicine handlin' me.'' F12-year-old African American boyUnderstanding the impact of illness and clinical treatments on persons is an enduring interest within social studies of medicine. In this article I examine how psychiatric disorders and pharmaceutical interventions shape children's subjective experience. I present the experience-near accounts of two children diagnosed with behavioral and emotional disorders to illuminate how alterations of self processes, including behavior, emotion, and cognition, through pharmaceutical technologies facilitate transformations in children's sense of self.In a classic formulation of the ''sick role '' Parsons (1951) theorized changes individuals undergo as a consequence of illness and medical treatment. This original formulation spawned decades of subsequent research seeking to delineate behaviors associated with illness (Mechanic 1962;Suchman 1965;Kasl and Cobb 1966a, 1966b); document variations in how sick roles are adopted (Twaddle 1969); and examine ethnic, cultural, and class variations in illness behavior and help seeking (

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The Register of “Complaint”:

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