When Lay Knowledge is a Symptom: The Uses of Insight in Psychiatric Interventions

In psychiatry, the concept of “insight” commonly refers to a patient’s judgment that they have a mental illness and need clinical treatment. However, this concept has been criticized because it imposes psychiatric knowledge on the subjective experiences of mental illness and possible interventions....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in social justice 2022-01, Vol.16 (1), p.245-263
Main Author: Rivest, Marie-Pier
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ethnography
Fricker
Hospitalization
Intervention
Medical personnel
Medicine
Mental disorders
Mental health
Patient compliance
Patients
Psychiatry
qualitative
Resistance
social work
Treatment compliance
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Summary:In psychiatry, the concept of “insight” commonly refers to a patient’s judgment that they have a mental illness and need clinical treatment. However, this concept has been criticized because it imposes psychiatric knowledge on the subjective experiences of mental illness and possible interventions. A significant body of literature is critical of mental health interventions; however, insight remains under-explored in this realm. This paper adds to critical analyses of insight by exploring how it is defined and deployed by mental health professionals in an acute inpatient mental health unit in a Canadian general hospital and what disciplinary and epistemic effects it has on patients. To this end, I draw on Foucault’s theories of psychiatric power and Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice to analyze results from an ethnographic study conducted in an inpatient mental health unit. The results show how patients’ resistance to medical compliance is framed by staff as a lack of insight, which reinforces the psychiatric model of mental illness.
ISSN:1911-4788
1911-4788
DOI:10.26522/ssj.v16i1.2681