What is "Normal"?: Considering Context and Recovering Moral Agency in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Marginalized Youths with Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

This work, motivated by years of professional experience in residential treatment facilities, intends to illuminate the experiences typical of youths in precarious life circumstances who are subjected to the mental illness diagnoses and treatment procedures. After reviewing and assessing the efficacy of biological and anthropological frameworks for understanding behaviors typical of these youths, attention then will be shifted to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures to display the real impact that limitations in the psychological framing of behaviors has on children and other marginalized groups. In general, this work intends to display how constraints within biological and otherwise internalized frameworks of mental illness lead to dehumanizing diagnostic and treatment practices, and how consideration of an individual’s life circumstances and understanding of their own problems would serve to limit dissonance and resistance in the diagnostic and treatment processes.