Biomedicine, neoliberalism and the pharmaceuticalisation of society

Abstract

In the Global North, the twenty-first century could be deemed an age of the &s;pharmaceutical imagination&s;, constituted by two parallel processes: an increasingly rigid and narrow definition of &s;healthy&s; or &s;normal&s; human experience; and a growing reliance on the use of pharmaceutical products to attempt to reach a state of perceived health or normality. This chapter discusses the connection between the success of the biomedical paradigm of mental health and the emergence of neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism, both as an ideology and a governmental policy framework, is premised on a belief in the capacity of free markets to deliver human well-being, coupled with a reduction in government expenditure and strong notions of individual responsibility. The white, masculinist values that have long been embedded in notions of ideal personhood, and the conflation of these values with normative notions of &s;mental health&s;, mean that women and a range of other socially disempowered groups have historically been at particular risk of psychiatric pathologisation.