Wk2 Health as a social construct Flashcards
What does the alcoholism test by WHO involve?
Not just a measurement of units, but whether you are able to fulfil your obligations
What are Marinker’s (1975) three levels?
- Disease - pathological process where physical state differs from norm
- Illness - feeling unwell, experiences of illness (no disease caused) e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome
- Sickness (sick role) - external/social place of disease
What is WHO’s definition of Health? (1948)
A complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity
What is WHO’s definition of mental health? (2014)
Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.
Previous theories of health and disease
- Historically medicine as ‘chaotically diverse’
- Germ theory (beginnings of Biomedical Model)
- Multi-causal models of disease
- Biopsychosocial approach
- Medicalisation
- Social construction of health & illness
What is germ theory/pathogenic medicine?
Disease caused by self depreciating biological agent, not miasma theory
Louis Pasteur - debunked spontaneous growth theory
John Snow (1864) - cholera outbreak - founding forefather of epidemiology
What is the biomedical model?
- Mind/body dualism
- Mechanistic - machine can be fixed
- Over-reliance on technology - only treats signs/symptoms not wider results
- Reductionist
- Ignores social, cultural, biographical and environmental explanations
Questions related to the biomedical model of illness?
How should illness be treated?
Vaccination, surgery, chemotherapy
Who is responsible for treatment?
Medical profession
What is the relationship between illness and health?
Health and illness are quantitively different. No continuum between the two.
Why are health and illness social constructs?
They mean different things to different people:
- Not everyone experiences symptoms in the same way
- Different societies have different methods of diagnosis and treatment
- Illness is not randomly distributed
- Constructs open to interpretation and moral, social, religious influence (e.g. homosexuality, suicide)
Therefore health and illness cannot be objective, scientific, absolute facts
What is social construction?
Disease categories are not created independent from social or moral forces.
This doesn’t mean medicine is unscientific, but that medicine and science are social processes
Health as relative (societies)
- Different societies can differ widely in their beliefs about the causes and solutions to illness
- They can also differ in terms of the levels of discomfort and pain that are considered normal
- Different societies and cultures within a society also have different models for understanding health
Different models with cultural beliefs
Equilibrium - Chinese medicine states the body has energy channels (yin and yang) that needs to be balanced. Humoural theory suggests that an imbalance in the humours (blood, phlegm, black/yellow bile) causes illness.
Religious - Possession by evil spirits causes illness. Exorcism could therefore be the prescribed treatment - a priest of shaman would be the protector of health
Ethical - Illness is a punishment for wrong-doing, or the result of someone casting a spell
Critiques of biomedicine
- Medicalisation
- Latrogenesis
- Surveillance and the clinical gaze
- Feminism
What is medicalisation?
Nonmedical items become treated medically e.g. homosexuality (1992 - WHO)
What levels can medicalisation occur on?
Interactional level: doctor-patient
Conceptual level: Medical vocabulary
Institutional level
(Conrad and Schneider (1980))
