Medikalisering av livets svårigheter: en diskursanalytisk studie av hur psykisk (o)hälsa representeras i riksdagsmotioner hösten 2022

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to provide understanding on how the discursive construction of mental health and illness in politics relates to health policy and in turn to inequalities in mental health. Based on Carol Bacchis discourse analytical framework WPR, I analyze policy documents from the Swedish parliament in fall 2022 in order to investigate how mental health and illness is represented in the political discourse and what potential effects these representations have on inequalities in health. The analysis shows that the biomedical, reductionist and individualistic perception of mental illness is dominant, meaning that mental distress is largely constructed in a clinical diagnostic manner according to which mental illness is perceived as a neurobiological disease to be treated. However, there are also tendencies of a social, holistic and structural understanding of mental illness, especially among the political parties with a socialist, feminist or nationalist socialist ideology. The social understanding highlights the relationship between socio-economic factors and mental health, and posits that inequalities in mental wellbeing cannot be leveled out without also addressing other structural inequalities. The effects of the predominantly biomedical elements of the political discourse are that the problem of mental illness and health inequality is medicalized, individualized and depolitized, meaning that responsibility is deflected from politics to individuals. Structural and socioeconomic factors are thus largely omitted from the problem representations which impedes the political changes necessary to address mental illness. Furthermore, the biomedical model contributes to stigmatization of mental illness, thereby reinforcing power relations through processes of blame, social exclusion and diminishing of agency