The Life Course Approach on Mental Illness

Abstract or Introduction

Mental Illness has been the subject of several scientific disciplines. Three main approaches on mental illness can be distinguished: The biological approach, which looks for the determinants of mental illness in the physical body, the psychological approach, which looks for the determinants in the (internal) mind and the sociological, who looks for them in the (external) environment or the person's social situation. The sociological investigation of mental illness can be traced back to Durkheim and his study on suicide (originally published in 1897), in which he shows, how suicide rates are shaped by the structural and cultural constitution of a society. Durkheim also advocated the view on mental illness as a special form of breaking the societal norms and values. A perspective which had been picked up in Parsons (1951) analysis of illness as deviance. Most sociologists share the conception of mental illness as the absence of conformity to social norms and values. However, especially until the 1980es, sociology in general and medical sociology in particular, has often been accused of neglecting the field of mental health and illness (Bendelow 2004). Within the current sociological approach on mental illness three dominant theories exist: Stress Theory, Structural Strain Theory and the Social constructivist perspective, in particular labeling theory (e.g. Scheff 1966) and the work of Michelle Foucault (1969).