Reconceptualizing Mental Health and Illness: The Ties that Bind Us and Social Acuity

• In Event: 4467 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (Cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 8: Gender and Health

Abstract

Americans are diagnosed with a mental illness at least five times more than citizens in all other industrial and post-industrial countries. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) standards by which the majority of mental disorders in the United States are diagnosed are acknowledged as having varying degrees of subjectivity associated with them in terms of how patients convey their concerns and symptoms to practitioners as well as the degree to which practitioners accurately make such diagnoses. In this presentation paper, I propose two things. First, I propose that we reframe discussions concerning mental illness from the degree to which individuals deviate from standards of “normal mental health” such that they are diagnosed as mentally ill to a measure of social and behavioral health in the form of social acuity. Second, I propose a specific way to measure individuals’ level of social acuity which focuses on the quality and quantity of ties that individuals have with others as well as accounting for social and cultural contexts. I conclude by discussing the implications of this approach for the diagnosis and treatment of social and behavioral health in the United States.

Author

• Anne Frances Eisenberg, State University of New York-Geneseo