Models of Health

Question 1

Disease- a definition

Answer 1

• A disorder or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or development errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavourable environment factors
• Health and disease both have broad definition

Question 2

Health and disease

Answer 2

• Health is difficult to define
• Definition of healthy varies dependent on various factors, for example
  
  • You = free from physical and mental illness
  • Neonate= free from illness plus developing normally
  • Geriatric = healthy when arthritis and bronchitis not playing up

Question 3

Health and disease

Answer 3

• Disease share no single, common characteristic
• Disease and health treated as distinct entities
  
  • However, neither can be said to exist without being associated with an organism
• This is commonly how we (and all medical scientists) view healthy- a person without an ailment is considered healthy

Question 4

Models of health- Biomedical model

Answer 4

• Rene Descartes
  
  • Cartesian dualism
• Body as machine
• Illness is a malfunctioning of machines that requires ‘fixing’ by medical intervention
• In the context health is the absence of illness

Question 5

The linearity of the biomedical model

Answer 5

Question 6

Features of the biomedical model

Answer 6

• Technological imperative
  
  • Creates a reliance on surgery and drugs as tools for fixing broken machines
• Reductionist
  
  • A tendency to offer simple explanations for complex phenomena
• Medical Imperialism
  
  • Anything connected with health comes under the jurisdiction of the dominant medical profession

Question 7

Medicalisation

Answer 7

• The process through which a previously normal human condition or trait becomes a medical problem
  
  • The problem then needs medical treatment
  • The problem then comes under the jurisdiction of the medical profession

Question 8

Medicalisation- ADHD

Answer 8

Question 9

Benefits of medicalisation

Answer 9

• By recognising a condition as a disease, certain conditions can be treated with concomitant improvements in quality of life
• May provide relief from feelings of ostracism

Question 10

Consequences of medicalisation

Answer 10

• By defining a problem as medical, it is removed from the public realm where there can be a discussion by ordinary people and put on a plane where only medical people can discuss it

Question 11

Consequences of medicalisation (2)

Answer 11

• Unnecessary ‘labelling.’
  
  • Stigma
• Poor treatment decisions
• Iatrogenic illness
• Economic waste
• Diversion of resources away from treating or preventing more serious disease
• Obscures sociological or political explanation for health problems

Question 12

Consequences of medicalisation: Homosexuality as a case study

Answer 12

Question 13

Criticism of the biomedical model

Answer 13

• Dominant paradigm until the middle of 20th century when medicine was subjected to vehement criticism
  
  • Alleged that medicine had hijacked and defined “health” to suit its own ends
  • Medicine had created the dangerous delusion that it was highly effective when in fact various socioeconomic and cultural factors were much more decisive in influencing the health status
  • Established the idea of a social model of health

Question 14

Models of health- Social Model

Answer 14

• Conveives health as an interaction between mind, body and environment
• The body lives in a real-world
  
  • Can’t consider people in isolation
  • Social aspects have major effects

Question 15

Determinants of health (Dahlgren and Whitehead)

Answer 15