Neoliberalism and Social Investment: Paving the Way for Medicalization and Psychologization

Abstract

In this chapter, Ariaans and Reibling outline how the medicalization and psychologization of social problems in recent decades must be viewed in the context of how contemporary welfare states have been transformed through neoliberal and social investment ideas. Both policy paradigms have shaped social policy discourses and reform agendas since the 1980s. While medicalization and psychologization are not commonly conceived as being integral to these paradigms, medical and psychological ideas, institutions, and actors have been part of the impact of medicalization and psychologization on the welfare state. Drawing on their empirical results from the previous chapters, the authors reveal how medicalization and psychologization have both been intentionally integrated into these paradigms and how they represent unintended consequences of neoliberal and social investment discourses and reforms.