Exploring medical mistrust: from clinic to community

Abstract: This introduction to the special issue, Exploring Medical Mistrust: From Clinic to Community, provides a conceptual framing of ‘medical mistrust’ from a critical social science lens. This special issue explores and unpacks the complex temporal, social and scalar relationships which are intertwined with contemporary manifestations of mistrust in medicine. We ask what social science and humanities disciplines can offer in relation to wider understandings of the processes driving resistance to and refusal of medical interventions, including but also beyond vaccines. We distil insights derived from diverse spaces of medical encounter, ambivalence and resistance that serve as arenas which generate mistrust. We bring this analysis to deepen an understanding of the frictions and affective relations which exist between vertical and horizontal relations which constitute health systems.

Keywords: medical mistrust, social science, anthropology, COVID-19, trust

Article posted to the Journal of the British Academy, volume 11, supplementary issue 6 (Exploring Medical Mistrust: From Clinic to Community)