Theories Of Mental Illness From Sociological Perspective

Mental Illness from a Sociological Perspective

Sociologists have long been concerned about problem behaviors that other scholars and lay individuals label as mental illness. There are five paradigms that sociologists used throughout the years to explain mental illness: degeneracy, social pathology, labeling, medicalization, and genetics. Some of these theories are psychiatric, social, or biological. The first paradigm is degeneracy theory. Degeneracy theory is an explanation where society’s problems are caused by individuals who are deviant. There was concern that degenerate individuals would pass on their deviant traits through heredity. Degeneracy was a way to understand and explain all the various forms of differences or deviance that could explain society’s problems. It was during that time that mental illness was grouped together with other social conditions like crime. Sociologists weren’t defining mental illness, they were focused on explaining the source. During the early twentieth century sociologists started to
It is also known as “sick society”. Sick society is regarded as something that can endanger society, examples of this would be drug use, crime, and mental illness. There was nothing medical about this approach which made it very different than degeneracy. Different studies were conducted in specific areas to document rates of hospitalization for mental illness. This work, however, was still based on how psychiatry defined mental illness. It was discovered that social pathology could be applied to several different social problems. Lemert (1951) stated that if social pathology was going to be used to understand society’s problems then “it needed to take into account how groups were differentiated in ways that resulted in penalties and sanctions (Perez, et all, 251).” It was this thought that led to the development of labeling