This open access book analyses the idea that medicine and psychology have a substantial (and
underestimated) impact on Western welfare states. Based on mixed-methods analyses conducted in
Germany it analyses this influence on debates and policies related to unemployment poverty
and childhood. The book demonstrates how the turn to neoliberalism and social investment
thinking has created this medicalisation and psychologisation of social policies and the
contributions provide important insights for students and scholars of sociology of health and
illness political sociology social and health policy medicine psychology and public
health.