Jeppe Oute¹, Lotte Huniche², Connie T. Nielsen³, Anders Petersen⁴

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¹ Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
² User Perspectives, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
³ Psychiatric Department Kolding-Vejle, Region of Southern Denmark, Denmark.
⁴ Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
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Abstract: The present study is a part of a broader multisited field study on involvement of relatives in Danish psychiatry. The article aims to elucidate which political classifications of normality and mental illness that are displayed in two health political campaigns regarding anti-stigmatization and social inclusion and how such classifications co-constitute the subjectivity of individuals suffering from mental illness and their relatives. Drawing on a discourse theoretical perspective laid out by political theorists Laclau and Mouffe, we analyze how the campaigns bring into effect a weak and ineffective subject of deviance and how it is constituted by a subject of normality characterized by opposing traits. The article takes up the discussion of how the campaigns’ articulations of the subjects of normality and deviance are imbedded in a hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism and individualism that asserts involvement as an expanded division of responsibility for the identification, classification and regulation of mentally ill subjects between public and private spheres of the Danish welfare state.

Keywords: Mental Illness, Involvement, Field Work, Discourse Analysis, Neoliberalism, Individualism

Cite this paper: Oute, J. , Huniche, L. , Nielsen, C. and Petersen, A. (2015) The Politics of Mental Illness and Involvement—A Discourse Analysis of Danish Anti-Stigma and Social Inclusion Campaigns. Advances in Applied Sociology, 5, 273-285. doi: 10.4236/aasoci.2015.511026.

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