Disrupting Psychiatry: Framing New Forms of Caring

• In Event: Health, Interrupted: Infrastructures and Tinkering in Telecare

Abstract

Many promises have been made in enabling access to high quality and low cost digital mental health care. Socio-technical imaginaries create trajectories from national political levels into the everyday practice and consolidation of psychiatry in many countries. In the moment of writing, internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) is being implemented on a national scale in Denmark, which has become a pioneer in implementation of different forms of telecare; care mediated through technology. iCBT involves, for example, patients using a computer program at home to recover from anxiety or depression. During the treatment, technologies such as videoconferences, phone calls but primarily text messages mediate the contact between psychologist and patient.
This paper provides a theoretical literature review on the possibilities of exploring the concepts socio-technical imaginaries (Kim, 2015), infrastructure (Star, 1999) and tinkering (Mol, 2010) within the attempt of mediating psychiatry entirely through technological devices. This paper address how the concepts can contribute to clarify risks and rewards of disrupting the field of psychiatry. The main argument of the paper is that, juxtaposing these concepts will move the field of internet-based psychiatry by contesting and elaborating emerging standards and routines. Thus, the paper contributes to discuss how STS can widen frameworks for mental illness and care (Mol, 2010) when psychiatry are enacted in continuously shifting ways.

Author

• Stine Rath Hansen, PhD student at DPU, Aarhus University, Denmark