Medicalisation Flashcards
Medicalisation
Describes the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness or disorders.
Conrad Schneider (1980)
Medicalisation occurs on three 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.
£. The level of doctor-patient interaction when a problem is defined and a medical treatment occurs.
Medicalisation (2)
Associated with the control of deviance and the way in which deviant behaviours that were once defined as immoral, sinful, or criminal have been given medical meanings.
Conrad and Schneider - Deviance to Medicalisation: From badness to sickness.
The process of medicalising deviant behaviour can be seen as involving a 5-stage sequential process.
Stage 1 - the behaviour is defined as deviant. For example, chronic drunkenness was defined as highly undesirable before any medical writer defined it as such.
Stage 2 - the medical conception of the deviant behaviour is announced in a professional journal. For example, descriptions of a new diagnosis such as hyperactivity or the proposal of a medical aetiology for a type of deviant behaviour, are used to promote behaviour.
Stage 3 - Claims making by medical and non-medical interest groups. Non-medical claim makers align with the medical claim makers through overt publicity campaigns or political lobbying to lend scientific credibility to claims.
Stage 4 - Legitimation of claim. The deviant behaviour becomes normalised with in medicine.
Stage 5 - The medical claim is institutionalised. The deviant behaviour is codified in a medical classification system.
De-medicalisation - Homosexuality
Homosexuality was defined as an illness by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973. After protests and picketing by the Gay Liberation Movement and support from some sympathetic psychiatrists, the APA voted to declassify homosexuality as an illness, a decision was later endorsed in the UK. Homosexuality became more widely recognised as a lifestyle choice.
Illich
Attributes 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 people’s ability to engage in self-care.
