In search of certainty: risk management in a biological age

The combination of heightened emphasis on risk and its management in mental health, the precautionary principle, the idea of genetic susceptibility, advances in screening technology, and the promise of preventive pharmaceutical intervention is highly potent, especially in a world in which preventive prescription of psychiatric medication has become routine. Psychiatric professionals are given the obligation of governing, and being governed, in the name of risk, and in a political and public sphere suffused by the dread of insecurity. But there are risks in seeking to govern risk in a biological age. In this paper Nikolas Rose argues that the public, politicians and professionals alike might do better to refuse the demands of risk, and learn to live with uncertainty.