Call for papers: the sociology of mental health and illness

CALL FOR PAPERS

The sociology of mental health and illness

 

Medical sociology or ‘sociology of health and illness’ has been a well-established and important sub- discipline within sociology since the Second World War, both internationally and in Sweden. It often deals with classic sociological questions about how social stratification, linked to class, gender and ethnicity, correlates with health status and access to care. At the same time, these stratification mechanisms are also studied in terms of how different groups are affected differently by the same disease or whether different groups are over-represented in certain diseases. An overarching theme of medical sociology is also how health and illness are socially constructed and how different stigmatization processes are linked to this social construction.

In research specifically concerned with mental illness and disorders, sociologists have often turned their attention to psychiatry and psychology as science, discourse, professional practice and the diagnostic process itself. Here too, research focuses on processes relating to the correlation between mental illness and class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and age. It also often problematizes psychiatry as a social institution and how social construction processes are interwoven with psychiatric practice and its diagnoses.

Today, health care in Sweden is well developed and the level of health is generally high. People are living longer and healthier lives, and healthcare is becoming increasingly advanced, high-tech and customized to individual needs. However, this development does not apply to mental health to the same extent. On the contrary, mental illness is the fastest growing category of diseases and is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to treat. This trend has led to a recurrent debate on the crisis of psychiatry.

Despite this crisis, psychiatric diagnoses play a dominant role in defining and understanding personal problems in contemporary society. A large field in the sociology of mental health therefore focuses on medicalization and the role of diagnosis in it. As a process, medicalization can be studied analytically along different dimensions. At a discursive level, medicalization increases when biomedical vocabularies, models and definitions become more prevalent in the understanding and description of social problems in different contexts. At a practice level, medicalization increases as biomedical practices and technologies become more prominent in the administration and management of social problems in different organizational and institutional contexts. And at an identity level, medicalization increases as individual and collective biomedical actors and identities become more prominent in addressing social problems and in autobiographical narratives.

For this thematic issue, we invite researchers working in medical sociology, disability studies, medical humanities or other disciplines interested in different aspects of sociology of health and illness. We welcome theoretical as well as empirical contributions that in different ways either focus more directly on psychiatry and psychology as theoretical constructs or practices, or that in other ways shed light on mental illness from a sociological and humanistic perspective. In this way, with this call we want to create a picture of where the sociology of mental illness stands today, based on a Swedish context.

Contributions may relate to any of the topics below, but are not limited to them:

• Psychiatric practice and diagnostics.
• Mental illness as lived experience.
• Medical, psychological, relational and social models of mental illness.
• Treatment of mental illness.
• Illness narratives and individual and collective identity formation.

• Mental illness and working life.
• Images, discourses and representations of mental illness in different arenas.
• Mental illness linked to age, gender, sexuality and ethnicity.
• Mental ill health and consumption.
• Policy and politics related to mental health.
• Mental health and professions.

The selection process consists of two steps: The deadline for extended abstracts (up to 2,000 words, including purpose, methodological and theoretical starting points, expected results and conclusions) is 16 May 2025. These abstracts should be sent to henrik.loodin@ses.lu.se and niklas.westberg@hh.se. For those submissions that are accepted, the deadline for full-length abstracts is 1 December 2025. The issue is planned to be published in 2026.

If you have any questions, please contact one of the guest editors of this thematic issue: Niklas Westberg Tolentino, niklas.westberg@hh.se

Henrik Loodin, henrik.loodin@ses.lu.se