Professions and the Politics of Mediation: the Case of Mental Healthcare and Psychotherapy

Abstract

Today in many countries across the world, there is a growing appreciation of the significance of mental health problems and the need to improve the psychiatric health of the population. This includes viewing the level of mental health treatment as a key factor of the overall performance of the health care service, which for a long time was not the case, with mental health issues often being neglected or marginalized within the medical profession. This article is an attempt to trace how disputes in the provision of quality mental healthcare are resolved in the current period. This includes an explanation of how the mental health profession is changing, focusing on questions of inclusivity and exclusivity in the profession. Also under examination are currently existing institutional conditions, that can be seen to either help or hinder the development of psychotherapy. The author works within the theoretical framework of seeing the profession of psychotherapy as an intermediate between the state and consumer services. The research into this problem was conducted in Germany by focusing on psychotherapy to reveal the existence of certain key links between the profession, the state and citizens. After providing a brief overview of the key theoretical frameworks and debates regarding professions in the sociology discipline, the author traces the links between the development of the profession alongside the general modernisation of society and new innovations in the administration of the public sector. The question is raised as to how instructional barriers can be reduced and more devolution of powers achieved to aid administrative flexibility. The results show the extreme difficulty inherent deep roots of power relations in the medical profession. The conclusions of this research allow us to trace the course of the future study by sociologists of the increasingly important field of mental health and psychotherapy and see how better to help it meet the needs of citizens in the 21^st century .