This book critiques the connection between Western society and madness scrutinizing if and how societal insanity affects the cause construction and consequence of madness. Looking beyond the affected individual to their social political economic ecological and cultural context this book examines whether society itself and its institutions divisions practices and values is mad. That society’s insanity is relevant to the sanity and insanity of its citizens has been argued by Fromm in The Sane Society but also by a host of sociologists social thinkers epidemiologists and biologists. This book builds on classic texts such as Foucault’s History of Madness Scull’s Marxist-oriented works and more recent publications which have arisen from a range of socio-political and patient-orientated movements. Chapters in this book draw on biology psychology sociological and anthropological thinking that argues that where madness is concerned society matters. Providing an extended case study of how the sociological imagination should operate in a contemporary setting this book draws on genetics neuroscience cognitive science radical psychology and evolutionary psychology/psychiatry. It is an important read for students and scholars of sociology anthropology social policy criminology health and mental health. |Insane Society: A Sociology of Mental Health | Health & Social Care
