The neuropsychiatric biopolitics of dementia and its ethnicity problem

Sociological analyses of dementia have long drawn on critiques of medicalisation and the
medical model. This approach fails to account for late 20th/early 21st century expansion of
neuropsychiatric biopolitics, wherein a more subtle and pervasive (self-)governance of health,
illness, and life itself is at stake. Since the 1970s, new neuropsychiatric imaginings of dementia
have been promoted, as evident in government, third sector and research trajectories. From
the 2000s, engagements with ethnicity have played an increasingly important role in these
trajectories. Minority ethnic (ME) populations have emerged as a new type of dementia problem.
Observations about diagnosis rates and timings, medication and nursing support (including care
home admission) are normatively appraised to associate minority ethnicity with poor dementia
outcomes. These outcomes are then attributed to purported cultural shortcomings of these
populations. The emergence of (minority) ethnicity as a problem supports a neuropsychiatric
biopolitics of dementia, wherein citizens must govern their conduct accordingly so as not to
become like the imagined ‘ethnic’ antagonist. Ultimately, dementia’s newfound ethnicity problem
may not serve the interests of people affected by dementia so much as researchers in the field,
who should therefore reflect on their own contributions.