Monica Greco (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Medically unexplained symptoms: the failure of categories and the paradox of care
The case of medically unexplained symptoms (or MUS) is one that draws our attention to situations where care, more often than not, is perceived to fail. The role of inadequate diagnostic categories in producing such failures of care is frequently acknowledged in the literature, particularly now that a fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is in preparation, offering the opportunity to revise existing nomenclature. This paper offers a reading of this debate to argue that the failure associated with MUS points to the limits and paradoxes inherent not in specific diagnostic categories, but in the practice of diagnostic categorising more generally.
Monica Greco is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Research Fellow of the Alexander Von Humboldt Stiftung. She is the author of Illness as a Work of Thought (Routledge, 1998), co-editor (with Mariam Fraser) of The Body: A Reader (Routledge, 2005) and co-editor (with Paul Stenner) of The Emotions: A Social Science Reader (Routledge, 2008).
The case of medically unexplained symptoms (or MUS) is one that draws our attention to situations where care, more often than not, is perceived to fail. The role of inadequate diagnostic categories in producing such failures of care is frequently acknowledged in the literature, particularly now that a fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is in preparation, offering the opportunity to revise existing nomenclature. This paper offers a reading of this debate to argue that the failure associated with MUS points to the limits and paradoxes inherent not in specific diagnostic categories, but in the practice of diagnostic categorising more generally.
Monica Greco is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Research Fellow of the Alexander Von Humboldt Stiftung. She is the author of Illness as a Work of Thought (Routledge, 1998), co-editor (with Mariam Fraser) of The Body: A Reader (Routledge, 2005) and co-editor (with Paul Stenner) of The Emotions: A Social Science Reader (Routledge, 2008).
