The troubled relationship between psychiatry and sociology.

The alienated relationship between psychiatry and sociology is explored. The two disciplines largely took divergent paths after 1970. On the one side, psychiatry manifested a pre-occupation with methodological questions and sought greater medical respectability, with a biomedical approach returning to the fore. Social psychiatry and its underpinning biopsychosocial model became increasingly marginalised and weakened. On the other side, many sociologists turned away from psychiatry and the epidemiological study of mental health problems and increasingly restricted their interest to social theory and qualitative research. An interdisciplinary void ensued, to the detriment of the investigation of social aspects of mental health.