Digital Healthcare and Expertise: Mental Health and New Knowledge Practices PDF
Preview Digital Healthcare and Expertise: Mental Health and New Knowledge Practices
HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY Digital Healthcare and Expertise Mental Health and New Knowledge Practices Claudia Egher Health, Technology and Society Series Editors Rebecca Lynch Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health University of Exeter Exeter, UK Martyn Pickersgill Usher Institute University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK Medicine, health care, and the wider social meaning and management of health are undergoing major changes. In part this reflects developments in science and technology, which enable new forms of diagnosis, treat- ment and delivery of health care. It also reflects changes in the locus of care and the social management of health. Locating technical develop- ments in wider socio-economic and political processes, each book in the series discusses and critiques recent developments in health technologies in specific areas, drawing on a range of analyses provided by the social sciences. Some have a more theoretical focus, some a more applied focus but all draw on recent research by the authors. The series also looks toward the medium term in anticipating the likely configurations of health in advanced industrial society and does so comparatively, through exploring the globalization and internationalization of health. Claudia Egher Digital Healthcare and Expertise Mental Health and New Knowledge Practices Claudia Egher Department of Health, Ethics and Society Maastricht University Maastricht, The Netherlands ISSN 2946-3386 ISSN 2946-3378 (electronic) Health, Technology and Society ISBN 978-981-16-9177-5 ISBN 978-981-16-9178-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9178-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023. This book is an open access publication. 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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore To Véronique Series Editors’ Preface Medicine, healthcare, and the wider social meanings and management of health are continually in the process of change. While the “birth of the clinic” heralded the process through which health and illness became increasingly subject to the surveillance of medicine, for example, surveil- lance has become more complex, sophisticated, and targeted—as seen in the search for “precision medicine” and now “precision public health.” Both surveillance and health itself emerge as more provisional, uncertain, and risk-laden as a consequence, and we might also ask what now consti- tutes “the clinic,” how meaningful a concept of a clinic ultimately is, and where else might we now find (or not find) healthcare spaces and interventions. Ongoing developments in science and technology are helping to enable and propel new forms of diagnosis, treatment, and the delivery of healthcare. In many contexts, these innovations both reflect and further contribute to changes in the locus of care and burden of responsibility for health. Genetics, informatics, and imaging—to name but a few—are redefining collective and individual understandings of the body, health, and disease. At the same time, long-established and even ostensibly mun- dane technologies and techniques can generate ripples in local discourse and practices as ideas about the nature and focus of healthcare shift in response to global debates about, for instance, One Health and Planetary Health. vii viii Series Editors’ Preface The very technologies that (re)define health are also the means through which the individualization of healthcare can occur—through, for instance, digital health, diagnostic tests, and the commodification of restorative tissue. This individualization of health is both culturally derived and state-sponsored, as exemplified by the promotion of “self- care.” These shifts are simultaneously welcomed and contested by profes- sionals, patients, and the wider public. Hence they at once signal and instantiate wider societal ambivalences and divisions. This series explores these processes within and beyond the conven- tional domain of “the clinic,” and asks whether they amount to a qualita- tive shift in the social ordering and value of medicine and health. Locating technical use and developments in wider socioeconomic and political processes, each book discusses and critiques the dynamics between health, technology, and society through a variety of specific cases and draws on a range of analyses provided by the social sciences. The series has already published more than 20 books that have explored many of these issues, drawing on novel, critical, and deeply informed research undertaken by their authors. In doing so, the books have shown how the boundaries between the three core dimensions that underpin the whole series—health, technology, and society—are changing in funda- mental ways. In Digital Healthcare and Expertise, Claudia Egher focuses on an area that has attracted much promise, hope, and investment—but which nev- ertheless remains less well studied than might be expected within the social studies of medicine: digital mental health. This exciting mono- graph considers compelling questions around the construction and medi- ation of experiences framed often in psychiatry and beyond as “bipolar disorder” within digital spaces, with particular analytic attention to the performance and negotiation of expertise. It provides a bold analysis of the reconfiguring of (the relations between) forms of online (and offline) epistemic practices, performances of and claims to knowledge and exper- tise, and understandings and experiences of the self. Through Digital Healthcare and Expertise, Egher illustrates the complexities inherent to shifting understandings and deployments of expertise relating to bipolar Series Editors’ Preface ix disorder within online platforms, and presents a novel interpellation of science and technology studies, medical sociology, and media studies that will be vital to future analyses of health, technology, and society. London, UK Rebecca Lynch Edinburgh, UK Martyn Pickersgill Acknowledgments Working on this book has been an incredible adventure, and I am deeply grateful for all the help and support I have received along the way from colleagues, family, and friends, from the first stages of my doctoral research upon which this work is based to the close readings of its penul- timate draft. Having immersed myself in the experiences of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder for many years now, I have acquired a rich understand- ing of the challenges involved in the management of this condition. Without wanting to be presumptuous, I would therefore like to first and foremost express my gratitude to the many people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, who have written about their states, experiments, joys, and dif- ficulties on the digital platforms I studied. In the absence of such endeav- ors, this book would literally not have been possible. I do hope that it does justice to their tremendous efforts and valuable insights. I would particularly like to thank Natasha Tracy and Julie A. Fast, who kindly allowed me to interview them and use materials from their digital platforms. I can still vividly remember how impressed I was during the first year of my PhD, when I discovered their blogs and became aware of the numerous and varied contributions they were making across different media. I continue to be impressed by their work, and I would like to express my appreciation for their dedication and considerable efforts to help improve the lives of other people diagnosed with bipolar disorder. xi
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