Abstract

POMBO, Mariana Ferreira. From refusal to diagnosis demand: new arrangements of medicalization. Arq. bras. psicol. [online]. 2017, vol.69, n.3, pp. 5-20. ISSN 1809-5267.

This paper intends to analyze how medicalization of suffering occurred in the 19th century and what changed in the passage to the contemporaneity. Initially, it is described the function of modern psychiatry to normalize deviations and correct the "dangerous" "mentally ill". We will see the variations on social perception of insanity since the 15th century until the 19th, when it was classified as mental illness. At this time, the diagnosis stigmatized the patient and caused anguish, because the mental illness was connected to morality and desire. Then, we see that medicalization of emotions and behaviors that occurred after psychiatric reform is different from medicalization in the 19th century. It contributes for destigmatization of mental illness and for a change of the diagnosis function, which recognizes a suffering. As it does not define an abnormality, but instead a normal condition, it is even claimed by the subject, who takes active role in the care of his disease.

Keywords : Mental illness; Medicalization of suffering; Psychiatry; Diagnosis.

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