In our Module 3 discussion board, I wrote about Chiropractic care and how looking at our
views on Chiropractic, and how the practice has evolved, can help explain our current
society. Now I will be looking at chiropractic care through the social science lens. In our Four
General Education Lenses, the social science lens includes subjects that are focusing on the
study of society and the relationships between people. “Subjects included in this lens are
psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and geography” (SNHU,
n.d.). We know that the social science lens can often overlap with other lens’ such as the
humanities, and oftentimes social scientists will use the historical lens to look through
history at how a topic has evolved and what it has been shaped into by society today (which is
what I wrote about previously, Chiropractic through the historical lense).
With the social science lens, we can look at Chiropractic from a standpoint of public
perception and community outlook on the topic. We ask the question, how does chiropractic
care impact society? Well, the main concern of chiropractic care is the prevention, diagnosis,
and management of back pain and or spinal disorders. A large portion of how we perceive
chiropractic care, considering that it is largely viewed as a holistic approach to health and
wellness, is how the communities we live in share and address a certain perception. One facet
of this, may be that from the dawn of medicine, medical practitioners and institutions have
displayed hesitancy towards accepting any other institution or form of healing for their
patients. Another facet that is consequential of the waterfall effect, is that medical doctors
may not fully understand what it is that Chiropractors do as they were not trained in spinal
manipulations.
As a side note, my roommate is actually getting ready to graduate from a Chiropractic
institution, and to be board certified, must have extensive knowledge on things you would
expect doctors in a hospital to have. Gynecology, dermatology, anatomy, biology,
physiology, chemistry, etc…(seriously I was shocked to see them studying so many
seemingly "unrelated" topics). So it is very interesting to me that chiropractors go through
rigorous training on different forms of medicine, yet most medical doctors don’t have the
same extensive knowledge on chiropractic.
The social science lens has influenced my own understanding of chiropractic, really only in
the sense it has proven to be a practice that is little understood by the vast majority of medical
practices (or at least was). An aspect of the social sciences that has always interested me is
anthropology. Previously to my decision to study psychology, anthropology was my first
choice and I was only swayed towards psychology from the fact that modern anthropology
somewhat lacks the “field” experience I was hoping for. Besides that, anthropology can be
used to understand chiropractic care from how people and their cultures interact with and
view the topic. By using more than one lens, my analysis of chiropractic care has allowed me
to obtain a more comprehensive foundation for what chiropractic is, how it works, and the
many reasons behind why it was only recently considered a “real” medical profession.
Resource Link:
https://learn.snhu.edu/d2l/lor/viewer/viewFile.d2lfile/1110700/23936,-1/
