Toward a Biopsychosocial Welfare State? How Medicine and Psychology Transform Social Policy

This open access book analyses the idea that medicine and psychology have a substantial (and underestimated) impact on Western welfare states. Based on mixed-methods analyses conducted in Germany, it analyses this influence on debates and policies related to unemployment, poverty, and childhood. The book demonstrates how the turn to neoliberalism and social investment thinking has created this medicalisation and psychologisation of social policies, and the contributions provide important insights for students and scholars of sociology of health and illness, political sociology, social and health policy, medicine, psychology, and public health.

Introduction.- The biopsychosocial welfare state: A theoretical framework.- Medicine, psychology, and the welfare state.- Unemployment – A case for medicine and psychology?.- Poverty – More than just a lack of material resources?.- Childhood in crisis – Are medicine and psychology part of the problem or part of the solution?.- Neoliberalism and social investment: Paving the way for medicalization and psychologization.- The biopsychosocial welfare state: A new perspective on social policy.

Nadine Reibling is Professor at the Fulda University of Applied Sciences and heads the MEPYSO research group at the University of Siegen, Germany.

Mareike Ariaans has held positions as Research Associate at the University of Siegen and the University of Mannheim, Germany. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Mannheim in 2021.