The Politics Of Madness

Download or read book The Politics of Madness written by Hope Landrine and published by Peter Lang Pub Incorporated. This book was released on 1992 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Madness presents the case that psychiatric disorders maintain the inequalities found in today's stratified societies. Landrine argues that the stereotypes of women, the poor, and minorities affect psychiatric diagnoses, and support this with several shocking, empirical investigations. In one study, clinicians diagnosed descriptions of poor people as schizophrenia; poor black men as antisocial personality disorder; and women as suffering from depression. This scholarly, interdisciplinary work is the first to present hard evidence for the view that psychiatric disorders are political categories that maintain social order.