A Critical Approach to Abnormality 243In isolating psychological interventions to one part of the body, typically
the brain, however, this approach fails to take into consideration the power
that social, relational, and generational factors have on how psychological
health is diagnosed and managed. This is evidenced by demographic data
on psychotic disorders, for instance, which shows that consumers from
non-European backgrounds are significantly more likely to be diagnosed
than their white counterparts (Schwartz and Blankenship, 2014).
Throughout research related to mental health, the practice of
identifying biological causes for psychosocial suffering and intervening
through medical frames of knowledge is commonly referred to as the
biomedical model of psychopathology (Deacon, 2013; Zachar, 2014).
However, some mental health service providers and researchers have
suggested it would be more accurate to think about this evolving network
of scientific research and professional practice in terms of a biomedical
industrial complex (see Gomory et al., 2011; Miller, 2015) because of the
way mental health services have effectively been monopolized by
biomedical care professions across a growing number of social contexts.
As described by social workers Gomory et al. (2011), “problems
previously attributed to environmental, social, and personal factors—such
as poverty, disintegration of family and community, grueling work, and
abusive or neglectful childhood—have been increasingly attributed to brain
dysfunctions stemming from as-of-yet-unconfirmed genetic and chemical
defects” (p. 1). The history of gross abuses in psychiatry, from lobotomies
to over-prescribed pharmaceuticals, belies just such a genetic or chemical
defect—one that seemingly remains forever elusive, around the bend of the
next great medical breakthrough. This deferral is not unlike the one
intrinsic to the logic of globalization itself, such that the psyche becomes
commodified and granted exchange value through its production and sale
on supposedly open markets. Such markets can be conceived as composed
alternately in terms of ideas or capital. A critical and decolonial
perspective argues that this does not have to be the case. Although, in order
to further develop this line of argumentation, it may be necessary to take
note of the growing number of alternatives to the conventional, biomedical
approach to abnormality.