Medicalization of psychic suffering in a culture of hyperconsumption

Abstract

In the current phase in which the consumer society is present, the values of hedonism, the incessant search for happiness through the acquisition of material goods, the denial of suffering, leisure, lightness and hyperindividualism are quite marked. The growing process of detraditionalization of society has made the subject at the same time free and unstable. With the weakening of the ordering capacity of institutions such as church and school, the subject tends to seek in the consumption of goods and services a source of security, in addition to the use of medications that relieve the psychic suffering generated by this helplessness. Considering that the medicalization of psychic suffering reaches large scales in this phase of contemporary society, the present work proposes to investigate the factors of the culture of hyperconsumption that function as devices that favor the process of generalized medicalization. It was based on a bibliographical research in which some actors were observed that spread the medicalizing discourse, such as advertising, hegemonic psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. The information presented and organized in the research results in the finding that medicalization is the product of both the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the demand of the hyperconsumer for happiness, well-being and absence of suffering.