Now Is a Time for Optimism

The Politics of Personalized Medicine in Mental Health Research

Bibliographic Data

ID5337003
AuthorsJonas Rüppel (0000-0002-5885-5744, Faculty of Social Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume44
Issue4
Pages581-611
Publication date2019-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243919845049
OpenAlexW2942094609
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited86

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, personalized medicine has become one of the most influential visions guiding medical research. This paper focuses on the politics of personalized medicine in psychiatry as a medical specialty, which has rarely been investigated by social science scholars. I examine how this vision is being sustained and even increasingly institutionalized within the mental health arena, even though related research has repeatedly failed. Based on a document analysis and expert interviews, this article identifies discursive strategies that help to sustain this vision and its promises: "complexity talk," "extension," and "boundary work." These practices secure its plausibility, protect it from criticism, and maintain stakeholder support

Criticism · Engineering ethics · Mental health · Optimism · Personalized medicine · Political science · Politics · Psychiatry · Public relations · Sociology · Specialty · Stakeholder · Vision · BRCA gene mutations in cancer · Health Policy Implementation Science · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub