A feminist eclectic approach to sociological studies of mental health and illness: transdisciplinarity and intersectionality

Australian Feminist Studies. 2025. Vol. 40. No. 124-125. P. 277–295.

Mikhaylova O.

Drawing on Ritzer's paradigms, this paper proposes a feminist eclectic perspective that classifies and bridges general and feminist approaches in the sociology of mental health and illness. I argue that the classification results show that the sociology of mental health and illness does not have a distinct general approach that can be categorised as a component of the social behaviour paradigm. Some feminist research within the sociology of mental health and illness does not align with Ritzer's paradigmatic framework, as these studies adopt an activist orientation focused on social transformation through therapeutic interventions and the creation of new psychiatric classification systems. The approach I propose assumes that a researcher will employ transdisciplinarity, be intersectional at all stages of the research, and be limitless in their methodologies and theories. Such an intersectional, transdisciplinary approach is necessary to integrate the strengths of diverse sociological ideas about mental health and illness and beyond, which is accomplished through transdisciplinarity, and to maintain the critical focus on inequality through intersectionality.

Keywords: transdisciplinarity, methodology, intersectionality, Sociology of mental health and illness, feminist research, eclectics, sociological paradigms