Cargando…

Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars

With the United States military stretched thin in the “global war on terror,” military officials have embraced psychopharmaceuticals in the effort to enable more troops to remain “mission-capable.” Within the intimate conditions in which deployed military personnel work and live, soldiers learn to r...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Chua, Jocelyn Lim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7497448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32279155
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-020-09673-7
_version_ 1783583320723947520
author Chua, Jocelyn Lim
author_facet Chua, Jocelyn Lim
author_sort Chua, Jocelyn Lim
collection PubMed
description With the United States military stretched thin in the “global war on terror,” military officials have embraced psychopharmaceuticals in the effort to enable more troops to remain “mission-capable.” Within the intimate conditions in which deployed military personnel work and live, soldiers learn to read for signs of psychopharmaceutical use by others, and consequently, may become accountable to those on medication in new ways. On convoys and in the barracks, up in the observation post and out in the motor pool, the presence and perceived volatility of psychopharmaceuticals can enlist non-medical military personnel into the surveillance and monitoring of medicated peers, in sites far beyond the clinic. Drawing on fieldwork with Army personnel and veterans, this article explores collective and relational aspects of psychopharmaceutical use among soldiers deployed post-9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan. I theorize this social landscape as a form of “medication by proxy,” both to play on the fluidity of the locus of medication administration and effects within the military corporate body, and to emphasize the material and spatial ways that proximity to psychopharmaceuticals pulls soldiers into relationships of care, concern and risk management. Cases presented here reveal a devolution and dispersal of biomedical psychiatric power that complicates mainstream narratives of mental health stigma in the US military.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7497448
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher Springer US
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-74974482020-09-29 Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars Chua, Jocelyn Lim Cult Med Psychiatry Original Paper With the United States military stretched thin in the “global war on terror,” military officials have embraced psychopharmaceuticals in the effort to enable more troops to remain “mission-capable.” Within the intimate conditions in which deployed military personnel work and live, soldiers learn to read for signs of psychopharmaceutical use by others, and consequently, may become accountable to those on medication in new ways. On convoys and in the barracks, up in the observation post and out in the motor pool, the presence and perceived volatility of psychopharmaceuticals can enlist non-medical military personnel into the surveillance and monitoring of medicated peers, in sites far beyond the clinic. Drawing on fieldwork with Army personnel and veterans, this article explores collective and relational aspects of psychopharmaceutical use among soldiers deployed post-9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan. I theorize this social landscape as a form of “medication by proxy,” both to play on the fluidity of the locus of medication administration and effects within the military corporate body, and to emphasize the material and spatial ways that proximity to psychopharmaceuticals pulls soldiers into relationships of care, concern and risk management. Cases presented here reveal a devolution and dispersal of biomedical psychiatric power that complicates mainstream narratives of mental health stigma in the US military. Springer US 2020-04-11 2020 /pmc/articles/PMC7497448/ /pubmed/32279155 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-020-09673-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Chua, Jocelyn Lim
Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
title Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
title_full Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
title_fullStr Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
title_full_unstemmed Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
title_short Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
title_sort medication by proxy: the devolution of psychiatric power and shared accountability to psychopharmaceutical use among soldiers in america’s post-9/11 wars
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7497448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32279155
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-020-09673-7
work_keys_str_mv AT chuajocelynlim medicationbyproxythedevolutionofpsychiatricpowerandsharedaccountabilitytopsychopharmaceuticaluseamongsoldiersinamericaspost911wars