ABSTRACT
It was primarily the critical perspectives which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that exposed mental health and mental illness as highly controversial and heavily contested categories. These perspectives located ‘madness’ in socio-politics; refuted the concept of madness as ‘illness’; and questioned the power of psychiatrists to act as arbiters of ‘normality’ and ‘abnormality’. Once it was established that what constitutes ‘madness’ is fluctuating and ambiguous, then it became possible to theorize how mental disorder is related to social divisions based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and age. Whereas differences in patterns of mental health and illness had traditionally been attributed to the inherently flawed ‘nature’ or vulnerability of certain individuals or groups, attention turned to the significance of oppressive social relations and the social construction of health and illness.
