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weighed budget limitations and public fears of the “mentally ill” again citizen’s rights to self-determination,
deciding in favor of a crude means to achieve social order. Biopsychiatric logic is also the logic enabling
State mandates for increased the surveillance of at-risk populations (i.e. adolescents) by non-mental health
professionals, such as school counselors and primary care physicians. Biopsychiatry increasingly
rationalizes the state’s surveillance and diagnosis of citizen’s behaviors.
In addition, some of the country’s most prominent social problematics and fears—i.e. how to treat
poor individuals with mental illness symptoms, and how to prevent and punish rampage murders—are
negotiated via biopsychiatric “knowledges”, of psychopharmaceutical drug efficacy. The claim that
biopsychiatric drugs are largely effective in treating depression has been used to hold psychiatric
professionals responsible for their patient’s behaviors; doctors have, in fact, been sued for not prescribing
psychotropic drugs to their patients. But biopsychiatry does not always win. In some legal cases,
biopsychiatric logic is attacked— drug companies have been sued for producing dangerous products, and
defense lawyers have blamed psychotherapeutic drugs as the cause of violent behavior. In cases of violent
crime, the logic of law and order often trumps biopsychiatry, and unwell individuals are held accountable
for their disorderly social behavior.
In cases where adolescent boys commit rampage murders, for example, the public and jury usually
rule that the mentally ill subject is guilty and had the ability to control his behavior. In a case illustrative of
nineties America, the antidepressant Zoloft was blamed as the reason Victor Broncacio brutally murdered
his elderly neighbor, Molly Frazier. Blaming Zoloft seemed a wise defense choice. Broncacio had a
charted history of borderline mental retardation (his parents were first cousins, presenting the possibility of
genetic dysfunction), had possible brain damage from a near drowning, experienced a troubled youth
typified by poor school performance and “delinquent” behavior, and was diagnosed with Attention-Deficit,
Hyperactive Disorder, known as AD/HD. Broncacio had also been previously diagnosed with depression
and prescribed Zoloft, but was not provided follow-up psychotherapy. Aware that anti-depressants are
culturally praised as hard-performing drugs with big effects, Broncacio‘s defense Counsel blamed Zoloft
refers to Instead, cultural images such as advertisements as are themselves hysterical, in that they illustrate
individuals performing actions seemingly beyond their control, in attempts to achieve an ideal identity.
Convention