The insertion of mental health in comprehensive primary care (PC) has been a successful policy to reduce the gap in the treatment of people with mental disorders (MDs). However, the consequences of this progress may exceed what is desirable. This substantial deployment of mental health care could also be stimulating the medicalization of people’s daily lives in a more active way and consequently help to deactivate the socializing and transformative power of discomfort in society. In this work, I intend to understand how the mental health programs in PC could be contributing to transform expressions of daily living into medical problems that are not. After examining some aspects of mental health related policies, reports, and research, I suggest that the design of the Explicit Health Guarantees plan, the technologies used to in tegrate and developmental health care, and certain circumstances derived from this process, could be stimulating the survival of a reductionist and pathologizing biomedical model that would support medicalizing practices. Some suggestions are outlined for the development of health policy and practice that recognises and integrates the possibility to mitigate the potential adverse effects of this phenomenon.
Keywords:
medicalization, reductionism, pathologization, mental health, primary care, Chile
Author Biography
Jorge Crespo-Suárez, Atención Primaria de Salud (CESFAM)
Jorge Crespo-Suárez: Atención Primaria de Salud (CESFAM) y Universidad de Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Región de Magallanes
Crespo-Suárez, J. (2021). Biomedical reductionism and pathologization in mental health care. Are we overmedicalizing in primary care?. Revista Chilena De Salud Pública, 25(1), p. 113–124. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-5281.2021.65202
