Sociology

The diagnosis of mental illness is often contentious because some forms of it can be interpreted differently, as mere social deviance. Thomas Scheff explained schizophrenia in these terms, drawing on labelling theories of deviance. He said that schizophrenic behaviour broke some of the taken for granted, ‘residual rules’ of everyday interaction, such as conversational norms, which confounded people’s beliefs. Such behaviour was seen as bizarre and frightening, and evoked social reactions of concerned disapproval; the individual would be labelled as mentally ill and shepherded into the ‘insanity role’ by those close to them. 300-301