Stefan Ecks
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814724767
- eISBN:
- 9780814760307
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724767.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
This concluding chapter returns to “mind food,” showing how psychiatrists are both trying to counter nonbiomedical notions of drug effects and the biomedical model of short-term targeted action ...
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This concluding chapter returns to “mind food,” showing how psychiatrists are both trying to counter nonbiomedical notions of drug effects and the biomedical model of short-term targeted action itself. “Mind food” after all echoes the popular centrality of digestion, so likening psychopharmaceuticals to food makes these drugs seem innocuous. These biomedical prescribers explain the action of psychopharmaceuticals as “mind food” and that they compare ill moods to a nutritional imbalance is deeply ironical if the paradigmatic opposition between specific etiology and humoralism in the history of medicine is considered. Calcutta doctors tend to evade explaining diagnoses and therapies when this causes resistance from patients, and there is no regulation that stands in their way. The chapter goes on to elaborate on the medical and ethical implications of these issues, highlighting the ongoing public anxieties regarding mind medications.Less
This concluding chapter returns to “mind food,” showing how psychiatrists are both trying to counter nonbiomedical notions of drug effects and the biomedical model of short-term targeted action itself. “Mind food” after all echoes the popular centrality of digestion, so likening psychopharmaceuticals to food makes these drugs seem innocuous. These biomedical prescribers explain the action of psychopharmaceuticals as “mind food” and that they compare ill moods to a nutritional imbalance is deeply ironical if the paradigmatic opposition between specific etiology and humoralism in the history of medicine is considered. Calcutta doctors tend to evade explaining diagnoses and therapies when this causes resistance from patients, and there is no regulation that stands in their way. The chapter goes on to elaborate on the medical and ethical implications of these issues, highlighting the ongoing public anxieties regarding mind medications.
