Bipolar disorder: An epidemic or a consequence of the medicalization of society?

Abstract

Social sciences today are very sensitive to public health problems, a fact which leads to the emergence of new research areas and discussions about new varieties of social problems. In this article, the author engages with the phenomenon of bipolar disorder, which the modern medical community estimates as another epidemic that requires special attention and resources. The rapid spread of this epidemic allows social scientists to question the nature and social factors that contribute to the rapid growth in the number of bipolar patients. Ideas about the reality of the epidemic are combined with the notion that it may be socially constructed by changes in the language of medical knowledge, as well as new strategies in medical practice and total pharmacologization of medical aid. The emergence of this epidemic also reflects the continuing medicalization of society. Agents of medicalization are not only doctors, but pharmaceutical corporations, the PR companies they cooperate with, and the patients themselves, seeking solutions to their personal problems with the help of psychotropic drugs. We can also consider patient experience and patient policy by which people adopt the illness and try to give a public meaning to the experience. Bipolar disorder can also be considered as a product of the culture of developed industrial society, which gives rise to the demand for an invariably energetic creative worker, because in connection with the computerization and robotization of monotonous manual labor, the mass need for a disciplined worker and office employee has almost disappeared.