Introduction to the special issue on Social Darwinism

A brief history is provided of interventions with people with emotional disorders since the 1950s. A shortage of therapists is inescapable and even successful treatment does not change incidence. But the individual defect model supports the conservative view that causes are to be found inside people, rather than in social injustice. People who are defective are to be treated as part of the medical model that is extended to cover social problems. This view is an obvious extension of Social Darwinism that has long attributed success and failure to bad genes and good genes rather than to advantaged and disadvantaged social-economic environments.