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Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork among women fighting for a PMDD diagnosis, this paper examines epistemic clashes and overdiagnosis, underscoring the need for anthropological insights into health trends, and emphasizing the risk of "medicalized medical anthropology."

Paper Abstract:

In this paper, I articulate the concern that the field of anthropology is susceptible to medicalization. Drawing from my ongoing research on women advocating for recognition of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), I elucidate the epistemic battles arising between these women and health authorities. These conflicts manifest when patients' interpretations of symptoms diverge from clinical practices' interpretations, but they may also arise when expansive disease definitions potentially result in overdiagnosis. While medical literature extensively documents overdiagnosis and its harms, this has gained only little attention in anthropology. I contend that the emphasis on representation in anthropology in which we do not question the interlocutors' experiences, leads to the risk of unreflectingly reproducing biomedical language and symptom definitions, and thus neglects the broader structural and institutional factors contributing to patients' symptoms and distress.

I argue that anthropological insights and nuanced ethnographic knowledge are essential to comprehend the repercussions of overdiagnosis and medicalization on individuals' daily lives, self-perception, and responses to bodily experiences. Consequently, a critical examination of established medical entities and diagnostic processes becomes imperative in understanding the deep-rooted connections between overdiagnosis and escalating trends of healthism, characterized by heightened attention to health and diagnosis. This examination necessitates sustained scrutiny of medical anthropology, mindful of the risk highlighted by Browner as "medicalized medical anthropology" (Browner 1999).

I aim to begin a critical conversation on the knowledge that medical anthropology produces, not only in our cross-disciplinary engagement but also within the relation to our interlocutors and the academic discourse that we create.