Aneshensel & Phelan-Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health Chapter 1 response

This is a survey of the current status of the field, and an explanation of terms and questions being considered.
Aneshensel & Phelan (hereafter A& P for this post) bring together different viewpoints, and point out that "it is intellectually more fashionable to call for multidisciplinary perspectives" when studying mental health and illness. I like this idea! I am certainly not ready to even select a primary perspective, much less to limit myself to only one. (If I ever will be! My style is definitely more eclectic, and I've enjoyed the benefits of enhancing one field with another such as learning and health.)

In considering the definition of mental health/illness, A & P point out that most people who display symptoms of mental illness do not consider themselves as mentally ill.
There is also a social component to defining what is mental illness. (This is the social constructionist perspective-also addressed in the Horwitz reading.) This idea is that behaviors that are socially accepted in one culture are considered aberrant in another, and labeled accordingly. Then there's the component that one's place in society influences the interpretation of the behavior. This is colloquially expressed as "the difference between eccentricity and insanity is financial."
The medical model assumes that, since medical treatment "fixes" things, "the remedy authenticates the disease", and justifies viewing aberrant behavior as a medical issue. Laing (1967) is cited as asserting that some deviant behaviors are "sane responses to an insane world". A&P also cite the argument that some clusters of symptoms occur in very different settings justifies an objective reality apart from their social/subjective interpretation, but point out that just because symptoms occur in various cultures does not mean that they are indicative of illness/disease.
One consequence of the medicalization of deviance cited by Conrad & Schneider (1980) is a lessening of personal responsibility for one's behavior. This is something that concerned me as a classroom teacher. I don't know how many times I heard a student tell me he or she couldn't (or didn't have to try) because of ____ labeled diagnosis. In such instances, I think the diagnosis aggravates the situation, rather than helping. Eventually, the student is going to have to make it in the real world, and there are limits to accommodation. Another concern included in the chapter is that the medical model "diverts attention away from the social sources of deviance". As a beginning sociologist with a strong belief that society influences individual behavior, I am uncomfortable with that loss of attention.
Anther topic A&P include is the "debate over diagnosis". (Refer back to my discomfort with lay diagnostics referred to in my grant proposal response.) This is a debate between checklists- displays this behavior or not-versus a continuum approach that considers matters of intensity and frequency (and may be more likely to consider social causes or triggers of the behavior). A& P point out that "each perspective takes as given that which is problematical in the other approach". How does that affect conversations between the two approaches?

A final quote that interested me is that "the unequal distribution of disorder across social strata cannot be accounted for by etiological factors that are uniformly distributed throughout society." In some ways this seems to be a "duh!" statement, but I'm sure it's also necessary. Obvious when pointed out, but invisible until brought to one's attention. . . One example that comes to mind is the difference in how Hurricane Katrina affected different (socio-economic & cultural) groups within the Gulf region.