medicalisation Flashcards
Medicalisation
Describes a process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems usually in terms of illness or disorders. It was first referred ti by critics of the growing influence of psychiatry in the 60s and grew in popularity in the 70s, when linked with the concept of social control. Since then, medicalisation has been applied to a whole variety of problems that have come to be defined as medical, ranging from childbirth and the menopause, through to alcoholism and homosexuality
Conrad and schneider 1980
Claim medicalisation can occur on 3 distinct levels:
1. Conceptually when a medical vocabulary is used to define a problem
2. Institutionally when organisations adopt a medical approach to treating a problem
3. The level of doctor patient interaction when a problem Is defined and a medical treatment occurs
what does illich say about medicalisation
illich attributes to medicalisation to the increasing professionalisation and bureaucratisation of medical institutions associated with industrialisation. for him, the expansion of modern medicine has created a dependence on doctors and taken away peoples ability to engage in self-care
zola 1972
has argued that medicalisation is rooted in the development of increasingly complex technological bureaucratic system and a reliance on the expert
bureaucratic system
relating to a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
marxists
say that medicalisation has been in the best interests of the ruling class. from this standpoint, creating manipulation of consumer dependence on medicine are merely examples of a more general dependence upon consumer good propagated by that class
broom and woodward - medicalisation reconsidered.
it seems that patients benefit from a diagnosis because it makes meaningful and incoherent and disruptive experience and opens up possibilities for managing and living with the syndrome
