Abstract
Between 2004 and 2014, Canada lost more members of the Canadian Armed Forces to suicide than it did on the battlefield in Afghanistan. In newspaper articles, government reports, and educational pieces, these military suicides are routinely characterized as a consequence of “mental illness.” As such, public cries for “de-stigmatization” campaigns and greater access to “professional treatment” abound. However, such “treatment” is ineffective and profoundly damaging to those that it purportedly helps. Such is the disjuncture addressed in this chapter. The author traces the activation of primary psychiatric texts by service members, veterans, and those who care about them. Correspondingly, she demonstrates how this falling prey to psychiatry in one’s everyday work sustains “treatment” characteristically damaging.
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Spring, L. (2016). Pathologizing Military Trauma: How Services Members, Veterans, and Those Who Care About Them Fall Prey to Institutional Capture and the DSM. In: Burstow, B. (eds) Psychiatry Interrogated. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41174-3_7
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