Will There Be a Pill for That? ‘Money Dysmorphia’ and the Medicalization of Struggles for Subsistence

Authors

Bojan Savic, University of KentFollow

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2650-689X

Keywords

money dysmorphia, medicalization, pathologization, subsistence, precarity

Document Type

Commentary

Abstract

This article questions the rationality, operation, and effects of money dysmorphia as an emerging mental health diagnosis. It critiques the medicalization of financial angst amid the capitalist “polycrisis”, showing how the individuation and somatic pathologization of class subordination, socioeconomic precarity, and struggles for subsistence obscure capitalist inequalities, depoliticize them, and shield them from critique. I identify five concurrent strategies through which struggles for subsistence are medicalized: trivialization, reversal of social import, repetition, direct depoliticization, and the substitution of inequality with poverty. Furthermore, I show how the medicalizing discourse reifies money dysmorphia by constructing its social costs. The article concludes by reflecting on the risks of medicalizing financial apprehension.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Savic, Bojan (2025) "Will There Be a Pill for That? ‘Money Dysmorphia’ and the Medicalization of Struggles for Subsistence," Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis: Vol. 4: Iss. 2, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55533/2765-8414.1131
Available at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/emancipations/vol4/iss2/3