No way out? Biomedicalization and resistances in virtual communities of care for people diagnosed with agoraphobia

Abstract

Virtual communities of care are lay spaces that play distinct roles in the management of distress. In this research we look at online Facebook groups of people with a diagnosis of agoraphobia to explore the articulation of lay responses to the management of the biomedical diagnosis of agoraphobia as a disorder. We used netnography, through discourse analysis of posts and complementary qualitative interviews, as our methodological design. The theoretical framework provided by the concepts of medicalization and biomedicalization serve as the basis that allow us to understand that the articulations of care strategies developed by sufferers are not based on biomedical discourse, nor are they totally detached from it. The results of this research allow us to observe that on-line lay settings make possible both the emergence of lay care strategies that dialogue with expert strategies, and the irruption of biomedicalization patterns that call for the self-control and vigilance of people.