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      Medicalizing disabled people's emotions—Symptom of a dis/ableist society

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          Abstract

          The theoretical–conceptual article at hand explores how emotional discourses shape social relations by specifically focusing on the medicalization of disabled— and chronically ill—people's emotions. Medicalization is a concept from medical sociology that describes medicine's expansion into non-medical life areas, for instance into the realm of emotions, sometimes in order to challenge this expansion. The emotions of disabled people are often presented as a medicalized problem, rather than recognizing their embeddedness in a dis/ableist socio-cultural context. Such discourses instrumentalize feelings in order to individualize the responsibility for disability. For a contextualized and emancipatory approach, this study reviews papers on medicalized emotions from Disability Studies—a research program that can provide a rich archive of experiential accounts yet to be theorized through a comprehensive emotional perspective. The medicalization of disabled people's emotions can manifest in different ways: (1) In a dis/ableist society, able-mindedness is compulsory; i.e., we fail to question that a healthy mind is the norm and something to strive for unconditionally. This is also true on an emotional level; after all, some medical diagnoses are based on the wrong degree or temporality of emotionality. (2) Unpleasant feelings such as sadness are misunderstood as symptoms of impairment rather than effects of discrimination. (3) The expression of hurt feelings, e.g., related to discrimination, can easily be dismissed as hysterical. This assumption epistemologically disables patients. (4) Love and desire are delegitimized as fetish, for example, the desire for a disabled lover or the wish to start a family despite a chronic illness. The medicalization of disabled people's emotions individualizes and delegitimizes unpleasant emotions that emerge in a dis/ableist society. Different facets of medicalization enforce medical treatment instead, albeit in different ways. Disabled and sick people are cast as not feeling and desiring the right way, while hegemonic discourse prescribes psychological treatment against the effects of discrimination and bodily symptoms it cannot explain. Beyond the dismissal of disabled people's experience, adverse effects on healthcare delivery and health outcomes can be expected.

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          Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

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            On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem’

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              The Promise of Happiness

              Sara Ahmed (2010)
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Sociol
                Front Sociol
                Front. Sociol.
                Frontiers in Sociology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                2297-7775
                11 December 2023
                2023
                : 8
                : 1230361
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Section Disability, Inclusion, and Social Participation, Department of Social Work, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Kassel , Kassel, Germany
                [2] 2Section Theory of Special Education and Rehabilitation, Department Special Education and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Cologne , Cologne, Germany
                Author notes

                Edited by: Marci Cottingham, Kenyon College, United States

                Reviewed by: David Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa, United States; Rebecca Fish, University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom

                *Correspondence: Yvonne Wechuli wechuli@ 123456uni-kassel.de
                Article
                10.3389/fsoc.2023.1230361
                10750362
                38148881
                0da15833-9e43-4cd6-9544-f2b296c592d9
                Copyright © 2023 Wechuli.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 28 May 2023
                : 25 October 2023
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 94, Pages: 12, Words: 11103
                Funding
                The underlying research was supported by the German Hans Böckler Foundation under Grant number 401721.
                Categories
                Sociology
                Conceptual Analysis
                Custom metadata
                Sociology of Emotion

                disability,dis/ableism,emotion,medicalization,compulsory able-mindedness,impairment effects,hysteria,fetishization

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