Labelling People

The tag label defines an individual as someone. Defining behavior as an exception or crime is not a direct process. The tag is not neutral, it contains the evaluation of the application object. In a sense, it is "ownership" that obscures all other identities an individual has. These labels tend to transcend the personal identities of fathers, husbands, workers, friends, or neighbors when people are labeled as crime, mental illness, homosexuality, etc.

There are two differences between tags, hard tags and soft tags. People who believe in hard tags believe that mental illness does not exist. It is only deviating from the social norm that people are caused by mental illness. Therefore, psychiatric disorders are socially constructed diseases and there is no psychiatric disorder. Those who believe in soft labels believe that mental illness exists. Unlike hard tag supporters, Soft Tag Supporters believe that psychosis is an objective issue rather than being socially structured.

Peggy Thoits discusses the process of classifying people as psychotic in her article "Sociology of Psychosis." According to the theory of Thomas Scheff (1966), Thoits argues that mentally disabled people are unpredictable and dangerous and stereotypical that they can not look after themselves. She also argues that "it is marked as departing and is considered to be a deviation." This description is divided into two processes. One relates to the impact of self labeling and the other is based on social difference handling of individual labels. Therefore, if society believes that a person with mental disorder is unpredictable, dangerous and dependent on others, people who are actually not labeled as psychoses but who are labeled may be mental disorders there is.

In sociology, label theory is a departure perspective, according to which it is marked as "deviant" and involves people in abnormal behavior. Label theory, born from the study of Howard Becker in the 1960s, explains why people's behavior conflicts with social norms. For example, a teenager living in an urban area where the gang frequently visits may be labeled as a gang member. As a result, youth may start acting like a gang member or become a member. Sometimes people tagged incorporate tags into their self concepts (when a teenager marked as a gang member starts to see himself as a gang member). Some researchers think that there is a high possibility that people with low social status are classified as deviating.