excerpt from 'A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness' - Labeling
excerpt from ‘A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness’ (2rd edition) page 14
by Anne Rogers (Author), David Pilgrim (Contributor) Those emphasizing labelling do not concur as to who are the significant labellers. For Scheff (1966) it is psychiatrists; for Goffman (1961) it is the family plus professionals plus the total institution. However, there is an agreement that, once labelled, this significantly alters the person‘s social status. Once a person is seen to have lost their reason, then they will never be quite the same again in the eyes of others (Garfinkel 1956). They are stripped of their old identity and a new one takes its place in what Goffman calls a ‘status degradation ceremony‘. Part of such a process then leads to the labelled person internalizing the new identity ascribed to them. Thus, according to the societal reaction position, the psychiatric patient’s role is then maintained by a new set of role expectations. The person in the patient role plays at being a patient and those looking on construe all of the person‘s conduct in terms of the patient role. The pseudo-patients in Rosenhan‘s study logged their ward experiences, and the clinical notes on them recorded that they indulged in ‘excessive writing behaviour’: a mutually reinforcing process then keeps the person locked into their deviant role. However, this can be disrupted by new contingencies emerging - hence the findings alluded to in Chapter 2 when discussing social causation about the improvements of patients who can gain employment.
Copyright (C) Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim ‘A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness’ (2rd edition) (Excerpt reprinted for human rights advocacy.)
Professor Anne E Rogers SRN, BSc (Hons), MSc (Econ) Sociology Applied to Medicine, PHD (Sociology & Social Policy); Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Emeritus NIHR Senior Investigator
A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness 6th revised edition