Sociology of Mental Health

This course investigates the complex social and cultural processes that shape our experiences and meanings of mental health. The course will begin by outlining a sociological approach to mental health distinguished from psychological and biomedical models. Special attention will be paid to how experiences of mental health intersect with axes of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to understanding the psychological traces of histories of colonialism, slavery, war, and migration. Students will use the course methodologies and theories to trouble normative concepts of health and wellness in order to arrive at alternative definitions of health and healing. The course is interdisciplinary in scope and will draw on frameworks of mental health from diverse fields including medical sociology, affect theory, critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, and disability studies to explore the entanglements between our psychic lives and social words.