Sociology of Health and Illness Flashcards
What is the WHOs definintion of health?
Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
What is the social constructionist view on health and illness?
Views health/illness as social constructions. What is healthy (or unhealthy) varies depending on the meaning assigned to it. Meaning is ascribed though various social processes and institutions and is in a constant state of negotiation, hence the creation of temporary truths.
What is the functionalist view on health and illness?
Sick role.
Views health/healthcare as processes to maintain social order. Classic functionalists view illness as a form of deviance that inhibits the degree to which individuals can contribute to society. The medical profession is considered to be a ‘moral guardian of society’ or an institution of social control, which helps to delineate between normal and abnormal. In healthcare this involves the adoption of certain roles between patient and practitioner.
What is the Political economy (Marxism/Conflict theory): view on health and illness?
Approaches health through a lens of inequality, highlighting the barriers to effective healthcare for the broader population and arguing against the commodification of healthcare (profit-driven).
What is Social epidemiology?
Also referred to as the ‘social determinants of health’, social epidemiology considers how various factors might account for differing distributions of illness and disease.
Determinants relate to human-environmental, lifestyle, public health, and healthcare indicators.
What is Social epidemiology of age?
Positive correlation between age and illness (not necessarily causal)
Elderly men tend to have poorer health outcomes than women
Life expectancy for females 83.7 years; 79.2 years for males
Concerns for an ageing population and access to quality healthcare.
What is Social epidemiology of sex?
Males have shorter life expectancy (79.2yrs vs 83.7yrs).
Socially, males tend to:
Take more risks
Perform more physically demanding jobs
Have a lower level of insight into experiences of illness
Do not report feeling unwell or regularly present to GP
Visit the doctor once a disease is more fully developed
Misjudge the severity of their symptoms or;
Deliberately downplay their illness (in the clinical setting)
Terminate treatment before its completion
Monitor ongoing health concerns
Recent initiatives target gender specific experiences of illness and healthcare concordant with traditional gendered behaviour (e.g. ‘Pit stop’ program intended to appeal to masculine sensitivities) Implications for binaries in sex/gender theory?
What is Social epidemiology of Social class and status?
Marmot’s (2005) Social Gradient of Disease/Health: Positive correlation between class and health outcomes
Other status indicators include: workforce participation; neighbourhood; educational attainment; health literacy also affect access to healthcare
What is Social epidemiology of Ethnicity?
Indigenous populations have poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous people
Links to class; access/geographic proximity, lifestyles, culture, institutional racism -> intersectionality
Geographical remoteness
Limited access to resources, quality and continuity of care
What is Social epidemiology of Lifestyles?
Urban lifestyles more susceptible to illness (especially obesity) due to industry-based production; high productivity demands (stress); sedentary jobs & entertainment pursuits; environmental pollution; damaging recreations (smoking, drinking, drug-taking); and highly processed diets
Traditional/Agrarian/Subsistence lifestyles tend to involve high amounts of physical exertion (farming, hunting/gathering); central element of spirituality/religion; diets rich in pure protein sources, complex carbohydrates, little fat and no processed, synthetic additives
What is medical dominance?
The notion that the medical community is at the centre of many aspects of society.
Medicine/healthcare; labor market; research sector; popular culture.
Privileging of medical knowledge over other forms of knowledge (including social scientific knowledge; esoteric and cultural knowledge) e.g. History of the headache
What is the Biomedical model?
Illness is a state of dysfunction that is remedied via the prescription of various treatments.
separates mind/body (‘Cartesian Dualism’)
intervention over prevention
treatments hold a technological imperative
disease as almost exclusively biological – influences of ‘Germ Theory’)
What is the medical profession often seen as? What does this cause?
The Medical sector is sometimes viewed as a form of governance:
regulating bodies
social control;
exact corporate interests
Medical Dominance influences social norms concerning health:
Acceptable conditions to discuss
Perpetuates stigma against certain conditions
Guides popular opinion through public health initiatives regarding risk
Social norms also shape encounters between laypeople and medical professionals:
‘Death taboo’ (From ‘ Awareness of dying’ towards ‘Dying of awareness’),
And between medical professionals and other practitioners:
‘Doctor-nurse-game’
How does Evan Willis suggest that medicine experts exert social dominance?
Subordination,
Limitation and
Exclusion/Incorporation.
Who coined the ‘sick role’?
Talcott Parsons (a functionalist) coined the Sick role to describe how medical dominance was present even at the most basic interactions between doctors and patients
What are the challenges to medical dominance?
Cultural
The rise of holistic health and alternative medicine
Socio Structural:
Deprofessionalisation – doctors’ autonomy and control is weakened due to medical ‘demystification’ (e.g. increased access to medical info; media scrutiny exposing malpractice/corruption etc.)
Corporatisation: Doctors have to operate within a system based on meeting managerial targets (e.g. public hospital funding, staffing)
Standardisation – Doctors have limited agency (are often constrained by service protocols/budgets/practice policy) that enforce standard ‘cookie’ cutter treatment options.
Commodification: The patient as consumer/client negotiates with service providers for desired diagnosis/treatment
Social
Biopsychosocial model of health - Social status predisposition
What are challenges to medicalisation?
Normalisation as an alternative argument to Medicalisation ?
A kind of ‘de-medicalisation’ – The understanding of a physical/medical concept through a social lens. E.g. Aging, body positivity, neurodiversity, de-medicalisation of non-heteronormative sexual orientations/identities
Murphy (2009) observes that medicalisation only occurs when a condition:
Deviates from what we conceive to be healthy/normal (already a subjective concept)
Affects/could affect large numbers of people
Has a negative impact on human life (again, subjective and contextual!)
What is medicalisation?
The redefinition, in medical terms, of a stage or condition of life that in itself is not a disease.”
“A process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses and disorders” (Conrad, 1992:209).
