The Relevance of Medical Sociology to Psychiatry

Abstract

Collaboration between sociology and psychiatry is traced to the 1920s when, stimulated by Harry Stack Sullivan and Adolph Meyer, the relationship was activated by common theoretical and research interests. Immediately after World War II, this became a true partnership, stimulated by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, and the growing influence of psychoanalytic theory. The effects of a sociology that focused on issues of health and illness proceeded to grow in medical education, research, and the treatment of mental illness until 1980, when a distinct shift of emphasis in psychiatry occurred. In its role as educator of future physicians, postwar psychiatry developed a paradigm of biopsychosocial behavior but, after 3 decades, changed to a biopharmacological model. The definition of mental illness as a deviant extreme in developmental and interpersonal characteristics lost favor to nosological diagnoses of discrete or dichotomous models. Under a variety of intellectual, socioeconomic, and political pressures, psychiatry reduced its interest in and relationship with sociology, replacing it in part with bioethics and economics. In this article, the detailed underpinnings of these changes are described and interpreted.

‘We're Still in There’—Consumer Voices on Mental Health Inpatient Care: Social Work Research Highlighting Lessons for Recovery Practice: Table 1

“…The existing epistemological tension is well explained by Slade (2009b) who proposes constructivism as 'a more helpful epistemological basis' for understanding recovery (p. 54). Bloom (2005) questions the displacement of the term 'biopsychosocial' in recent years-a term first proposed by Engel (1977) to counter the reductionist notions inherent in biomedicine. 'Biopsychosocial' may best describe the point of fusion for recovery definitions.…”

Mapping the Sociology of Health and Medicine

“…It is common for these relationships to be discussed as if their similarities and differences were essentially cognitive, theoretical or methodological. For instance, social epidemiology and medical sociology are said to differ with regard to their key concerns, perspectives, and theoretical and conceptual approaches (Spruit and Kromhout 1987:586;Bird et al 2000:2-3;Syme 2000); psychiatry and sociology to share a common concern with human behaviour (Bloom 2005); epidemiology and social medicine to be differentiated on the basis of intellectual objectives, underlying beliefs and motivations (Jefferys 1997:131); medical sociology and medical anthropology to vary in concepts, methods and topics (Olesen 1974:8); and medical sociology and psychology to have contrasting theoretical underpinnings (Umberson et al 2000). The historical investigation of the sociology of health and medicine, undertaken in this chapter from a sociology of knowledge approach, shows another dimension to disciplinary boundaries.…”

The State of the Art in Medical Sociology

“…The increasing biomedical dominance in all medical branches is diminishing the effectiveness of medical sociologists (Bloom, 2005). Even though the numbers of medical sociologists are increasing, especially outside medical settings, ''Ithe current trends in the organization of health care are overwhelming the human relations of medicine.…”