Medicalisation and changes in advice to mothers about children's mental health issues 1970 to 1990 as compared to 1991 to 2010: evidence from Chatelaine magazine

Abstract

In this article, I examine the ways in which the portrayal of children's mental health issues has changed in a high-circulating mass print magazine, Chatelaine, in Canada over the last four decades of the twentieth century through the advice given to mothers regarding their children's behaviour and emotions. I selected these four decades as they reflect the rapid growth in medicalisation, risk society, neoliberalism and intensive mothering and corresponding medical treatment for diagnosed children's mental health issues. I divided the 40 years into two 20-year periods so that I could compare and contrast the ways in which child mental health issues were represented. There were continuities between the two periods, particularly in regard to the focus on emotion work and management; there were also important differences. During this period, the changing content of the magazine indicated an increasing pathologisation of individual children through increased coverage of the risks of psychiatric diagnoses and the possibility of pharmaceutical and other biomedical interventions.

Keywords:

• risk
• medicalisation
• children's mental health
• magazine
• content analysis
• parenting styles

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding this project. I also acknowledge the research assistance of Natasha Janketic and Joanne Levy Sack and the reviewers of the earlier drafts of this article. I owe particular gratitude to Andy Alaszewski, the editor of this journal for his help.