Psychotropics in Total Institutions

• In Event: 180 - Regular Session. Deviance and Social Control

Abstract

Psychotropic drugs are widely distributed within institutionalized settings in the United States to alleviate suffering. While a narrative of therapeutic legitimacy may justify the distribution of psychotropics to populations living within these institutions, we theorize that this meaning of psychotropics may obscure their great potential as instruments of social control that is consistent with what scholars have called social death and made possible by power relationships that mobilize biotechnology for human psychic destruction. In this paper, we synthesize and compare the prescribing and use trends of psychotropics across four types of total institutions: 1) the active duty military, 2) elder care facilities, 3) state and federal prisons, and 4) the youth foster care system. When possible, we pay special attention to the rates at which these medications are prescribed across populations defined by age, race, and gender and whether or not the rates of prescription are in excess of seemingly legitimate diagnosed mental disorders. We interpret our synthesis of the extant research on psychotropic use in total institutions through the lenses of two contrasting political theories of life and death, biopower and necropower, that we believe illuminates a vital paradox about psychotropics in total institutions: they can foster health and healing and they can promote death and suffering. We conclude by discussing the significance of psychotropics for existing institutional arrangements and the theoretical ideas that draw attention to the problematic relationships between global pharmaceutical firms, biomedicalization, and the apparatuses of state that these govern total institutions.

Authors

• Anthony Ryan Hatch, Georgia State University

• Marik Phellan Xavier-Brier, Georgia State University

• Brandon Kyle Attell, Georgia State University

• Eryn Grucza Viscarra, Georgia State University