Women, alcohol, mental health: a politics of oppression by Patsy Staddon - a presentation from the symposium on social movements and their contributions to sociological knowledge on mental health at the University of Wolverhampton. Held on 13 June 2014.

1. Women, alcohol, mental health: a
politics of oppression
Dr. Patsy Staddon
Plymouth University and WIAS
(Women’s Independent Alcohol Support)

2. Abstract
 How a social model of disability may also be applied to
understandings of mental health
 How it might illuminate understandings of women’s
alcohol use
 Human rights issue: when approval rests upon
prescribed and circumscribed appearance and
behaviour
 Challenge to concept of alcohol as problem, as
opposed to a means of exploration and self-discovery
 Discussion situated within a politics of oppression of
those with less power in society

3. Social models
Social model of disability says: problems of disabled people are caused
by how society has organised itself ---excluding certain groups by creating
barriers to their involvement and disabling them
(Oliver, 1998; Beresford, 2009)
Social model of mental health might ask: ‘what social factors make it hard
for me to be myself?’
 Acknowledges different ways of experiencing reality
 Addresses stigma and fear of deviance
 Questions imposition of medical model of ‘mental illness’
 Establishes concept of authenticity as human right

4. Problems with social
model for some service users
 Fear that may be seen as ‘choosing to be
ill’
 Fear that distress and pain may be
trivialised
 Medical model gateway to benefits and
other support
 Often demoralised by stigma
 May prefer to attempt improvement
without challenging system

5. Some thoughts on
‘authenticity’
 Feeling able to define oneself in society
 A sincere and moral expression of the self
(Carroll and Wheaton, 2009)
 ‘Genuine’, and including a ‘process of self-
discovery’ (Starr, 2008 p.59)

6. A social model of women’s
alcohol use might be:
Grounded in social model of disability
Seeing alcohol use as
i- response to social pressures
ii-alternative management of mental
health and happiness
iii-crucial gateway to authenticity and to secret parts of
mind

7. Response to social pressures
High proportion women with alcohol issues:
 Are victims of domestic and sexual abuse,
often both as children and adults
 Suffer depression
 Have other mental health problems
 Experience low self-worth
 Hide alcohol problem
 Fear loss job/children/partner

8. More to ‘health’ than not smoking,
over-drinking, or getting fat (Aphramor,
2009)
 “ ’Spose it’s a place of me own”
 “I worked double day shifts; all the people
were round about my age, or younger,
and we used to go out like and take a few
drugs and go round the pubs…it was
fun…”
 “I drank cider and the sense of
omnipotence was just fantastic!”
 “At no point then did I think it was drink
that was the problem. I mean I had loads
of friends up till I came into AA”

9. Alcohol as gateway to
secret parts of the mind
1-‘Rationality’ and ‘sanity’ are culturally defined (Ingleby, 2004)
2-‘…we only use one tenth of our brain’s capacity
consciously. Schizophrenia feels like the other nine
tenths…becoming fiercely alive’ (Shingler, 2008, in Jackson, 2008
p.23)
3-Alcohol traditionally used to enable ritual access to that
nine tenths (Bowie, 2006)
4-Some women, while using alcohol, had reached psychic
worlds they did not want to relinquish (Staddon, 2009)

10. ‘Something wrong
with me’?
 Belief systems affect how we see mental health
(Beresford, 2005) and substance use (Staddon, 2005)
 Powerful historical connections between
drunkenness and madness
 Alcohol may help self-discovery + expression
authenticity and be crucial to identity
 May provide ‘a place of my own’ (Staddon, 2009)
 Personal growth involves right not to conform to
expectations (Ettorre, 2007)

11. Not everyone wants to be the
‘fairy princess’ (Holland, 2004)
 Alcohol leads to behaviour ‘out of role’--
transgression
 Pleasure, risk, sexuality
 Rejection ‘feminine’ values and secondary
status
 May involve alcohol ‘disorder’ (Staddon 2009)
 ‘Blasted’, ‘annihilated’—wiping out learnt
behaviours
 Taking time out at all costs (Sherman et al, 2008)

12. Women’s alcohol use as
exercise of human rights (Ettorre,
2007)
 Greater stigma to drunkenness in women
 Women don’t have same right to misbehave
 Expected to take responsibility for moral order
 Care-giver and icon
 Denied full human rights (Coward, 1983; Lewis,
2009)
 Witholding approval commonplace
inside+outside treatment
 Causes internalised moral opprobrium

13. Oppressive culture for women with
mental health and/or alcohol
issues
 Category of ‘alcoholism’ can serve as social
regulator for women and others of lesser status
 Can be a product or a cause of injustice,
deprivation, poverty, anger
 Can enable people temporarily to access ideas
and experiences otherwise closed to them
 Such ideas and experiences may inform cultural
shifts and even social change
 Jury remains out on ‘social construct’ or ‘social
product’ and on alcohol itself as ‘oppressor’