Can Social Workers Reconstruct Psychotropic Drugs?
Cohen, McCubbin, Collin, and Perodeau (2001) have commented that generally, social researchers interested in medications have implicitly treated them in a way quite consistent with the technocratic discourseas technological products to be consumed in satisfaction of precisely identified needsand with its companion biomedical discourseas tools of practitioners who possess specialized knowledge to determine their appropriate use. (p. 442) These authors argue that this approach has not yielded the insights necessary to make sense of the numerous rationalities and irrationalities of (psychotropic and other) medication use. Yet the technicist approach appears to be implied in various texts by social work authors. For example, in an introductory article on psychopharmacology and social work practice, Dziegielewski (1998) expresses her aim as establishing a basis for understanding medication use (p. 371), but her discussion focuses on technicalities such as basic medication terminology and ru
