Final Quiz Flashcards
What do functionalists believe about health and illness?
Functionalist perspective- physicians function as gatekeepers for the sick role, either verifying a person’s condition as “illness” or designating the person as “recovered”.
What is the sick role?
Sick role- societal expectations about attitudes and behavior of a person being viewed as ill.
What is the conflict perspective for health and illness?
Use the term medicalization of society to refer to medicine’s growing role as a major institution of social control.
What are some inequalities in healthcare?
Recall the unequal distribution of health care resources as a factor in infant mortality
rates around the world.
-reflects prenatal nutrition, delivery procedures, and infant screening measures.
What is the interactionist approach to medicine?
- Labeling theorists suggest that the designation of a person as “healthy” or “ill” generally involves social definition by others. These definitions effect how others see us and how we view ourselves.
What is social epidemiology?
- The study of the distribution of disease, impairment, and general health status across a population.
Define comorbidity and give Covid-19 examples.
Comorbidity- The presence of more than one disorder in the same person.
Identify how race/ethnicity and gender effect health
Racial and ethnic minorities have higher rates of morbidity and mortality than whites. Women tend to be in poorer health than men but to live longer. Older people are especially vulnerable to mental health problems, such as Alzheimer’s.
What is mental illness?
A disorder of the brain that disrupts a person’s thinking, feeling, and ability to interact with others.
Recognize how the perception of mental illness differs from actual mental illness
The media routinely emphasize the most violent behavior of those with emotional disturbances, mental health and mental illness can be more appropriately viewed as a continuum of human behavior.
Identify two perspectives on mental disorders
Mental disorders may be viewed from two different perspectives, the medical mode and the sociological model, which is based on labeling theory. In the United States, society has traditionally taken a negative, suspicious attitude toward people with mental disorders.
Medical Model: An approach in which medical experts define illness or disease, determine and control the course of treatment, and even affect patients’ views of themselves.
What is fertility?
the level of reproduction in a society.
Recognize Malthus’s views on the rising world population
Thomas Malthus suggests that the world’s population was growing more rapidly than the available food supply and that food shortages would increase over time.
Identify Marx’s perception of population growth
Karl Marx saw capitalism, not rising population, as the real cause of social ills.
Recall the opinions of neo-Malthusians on population
Neo-Malthusians agree with Malthus that population growth is outstretching the world’s natural resources. However, they also insist that birth control measures are needed to regulate population increases.
