Lecture 9: medicalisation & pharmacalisation Flashcards
What is an institution in sociology?
Sociologist us the term institution to refer to enduring social structures including medicine as a social institution
What is Biomedicine?
Biomedicine – medicine, science, & technology work together as one institution
What is Social control?
refers to the formal and informal methods used by a social group to ensure that individuals conform to social nornm and to protect the existing balance of power among groups.
What are Social control agents?
Individuals or groups ( such as parents and religious leaders) that enforce social norms
What are Norms?
Social rules that define correct behaviour in society
Expectations that are socially enforced
What are the concepts of medicalisation in medical sociology?
- how non-medical problem becomes defined as medical, usually in terms of illness and disorders
- the process by which health or behaviour conditions come to be defined and treated as medical issues
- the process by which certain events or characteristics of everyday life become medical issues, and thus come within the purview of doctors and other health professionals to engage with, study, and treat
- The process of medicalization typically involves changes in social attitudes and terminology, and usually accompanies (or is driven by) the availability of treatments
Examples of social problems as medical problems
●Obesity ●Menopause / Andropause ●Alcoholism ●Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) ●Learning disabilities ●Anxiety (e.g., social anxiety disorder) ●Childbirth / Infertility ●Erectile Dysfunction (ED)
What are the cons of technology in illness (Hofmann & Svenaeus)?
➢Technology may create illness by making persons experience their bodies and lives in new ways, e.g., by revealing underlying disease.
➢Technology may alter persons’ conception of themselves and their vulnerability as well as their behaviour by revealing disease risks.
➢Technology can affect and change an already present illness experience (e.g., diabetes)
➢Technology can shape illness experience by making new phenomena and areas of ordinary life subject to measurement, attention, medical interpretation, and management.
Doctors are expected to report to the authorities all diseases that carry the risk of mass infection
True or false?
True
What is the Risk of iatrogenic diseases?
Harm caused by medical interventions (e.g. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria)
What is the effects of Media coverage of health and medical matters?
Growing interest in health issues among general public
What is the result of Increasing medical knowledge?
Ability of doctors to intervene increased compared to past (e.g. psychotropic drugs for mental illness, plastic surgery, sterilization, anti-impotence, sex-change procedure, abortions, sleeping pills)
What are some developments in medical technology (e.g. disease prevention, treatments and investigative procedures)?
Vaccinations
Vitamins
Supplements
CT scans
Define Pharmaceuticalisation accord gin to Abraham (2010)
The process by which social, behavioural or bodily conditions are treated , or deemed to be in need of treatment/intervention, with pharmaceuticals by doctors, patients or both
What are the characteristics of selling sickness?
- Massive growth in drug markets – especially USA & Europe
- Highly profitable – 25% per year for most companies
- Sales uneven across the world – chronic health problems in ageing affluent societies – diseases of poverty?
- Disease mongering (Moynihan) – widening the boundaries of treatable illness e.g. restless leg syndrome
What is selling sickness?
The claim that health problems have a pharma solution
How do you change forms of governance and promote pharma innovation?
- Changing relationship between regulators and the industry
- Reduced regulatory hurdle & increased dependency of these agencies on industry
- reduced regulatory review time & fast tracking of drugs for life threatening diseases
- regulators competing for custom of companies
•New policies to increase role of regulators in promoting drug innovations
– help combat productivity crisis in big pharma
•Globalisation of governance based on interests of pharma – increased harmonisation
How is health reframed in media ? What effect does it have on the population?
- Media co-opted into disease mongering – e.g. exaggerate prevalence of a `disease’ (restless leg) & need for drugs
- Media may legitimate need for drugs but also express critical voices
- Internet as a channel for pharmaceuticalisation of daily life (e.g Viagra for sexual potency) but also a space to challenge practices – pro-anorexia websites
What is the role of patients/ consumer groups in relation to pharmaceuticals?
Users of drugs as knowledgeable actors – assessing risks and benefits
•Potential for resistance and for aiding pharmaceuticalisation
•Self help/ patient advocacy orgs
– may support or challenge drug consequences
What is the effect of the use of medical technologies?
- Increasing numbers of aids for disabled people
* Dependency on medical technology (e.g. contraceptive implants, cardia pacemaker, life-support machine)
What De-medicalisation?
The process by which a behavior or condition, once labeled “sick”, becomes defined as natural or normal
Example
- Over-the-counter medicines
- Growth in complementary therapies
- Non-compliance with treatment
- Homosexuality
Which concept do critics of scientific medicine use to describe the use of drug therapies to treat “Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)” and “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)”?
(a) Eugenics
(b) Iatrogenesis
(c) Medicalisation
(d) Social engineering
(e) Social labelling
C
The removal of homosexuality from the DSM is an example of ____________.
(a) Medicalization
(b) Deviance
(c) Interactionist theory
(d) Demedicalization
D
Which of these is an example of the medicalization of deviance?
(a) A person with the flu is expected to be isolated and unproductive.
(b) The healthcare system is biased against people of lower incomes.
(c) Alcoholism used to define someone as being a bad person, now we treat
alcoholism as a disease.
(d) Doctors traditionally had an unequal amount of power over their patients, but
now we push for a more equal relationship.
C
The medical model of deviance advocates which style of social control?
(a) Conciliatory
(b) Therapeutic
(c) Compensatory
(d) Penal
B
What is the medicalisation of deviance?
The medicalization of deviance refers to the process whereby non‐normative or morally condemned appearance (obesity, unattractiveness, shortness), belief (mental disorder, racism), and conduct (drinking, gambling, sexual practices) come under medical jurisdiction.
What are the implications of medicalisation?
medicalization has implications for social control, power, knowledge, authority, and personal liberty.
What is medicalization?
The process of defining an increasing number of life’s problems as medical problems
Medicalization is marked by increasing ?
Levels of pharmaceutical consumption Use of other medical technologies Frequency of visits to medical services Risk of iatrogenic diseases Influence of medicine in previously non-medical domains Levels of health surveillance Media coverage of health and medical matters Risk of iatrogenic diseases
Examples of socialisation of medicine?
Roles and accountability within the NHS
The clinical consultation
The inverse care law
Social medicine and community medicine
The health system is made up of the sectors
Lay
Folk
Professional
Every culture contains a large number of guidelines which direct conduct in a particular situation. Such guidelines are known as:
(a) Culture
(b) Norms
(c) Folkways
(d) Mores
B
