Essay #2 - Sociology of Medicine
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medical_sociology_chapter_5.pptxChapter 5
The Social Meanings of Illness
Chapter Overview
Explaining Illness Across History
Models of Illness
Medicine as Social Control
Competing Models of Illness
Competing Models of Illness (con’t)
Medicine as an Institution
The world and culture of doctors
The economic, social, and political underpinnings of that world
Medicine as an Institution of Social Control
Three examples:
Medicalization
Genetic Research
The Sick Role
Medicalization
Process of identifying a condition as a medical problem requiring a medical solution
Process of broadening the definition of an illness
Example: obesity
Medicalization can gain support from:
Doctors
Consumer groups
Especially for “contested illnesses”
Pharmaceutical companies
Managed care organizations
Consequences of Medicalization
Promotes social awareness of a problem
Unintended negative consequences
Increases power of doctors
Decreases power of other social authorities
Medical treatment deemed only logical solution
Depoliticalization
Used to justify voluntary and involuntary treatment
Counter-pressures toward demedicalization
Consider
Some psychiatrists believe that battered wives who do not leave their husbands suffer from an illness referred to as “masochistic abuse personality.” If this idea became widely adopted by psychiatrists, what might be some of the positive and negative consequences?
Genetic Research
Geneticization: The shift toward defining genes as the cause of human disease, behavior, and differences
Benefits of genetic research into disease?
Disadvantages of new genetic knowledge?
Limits of that knowledge?
The Sick Role
Talcott Parsons:
Functionalist analysis: Illness as deviance
The sick role summarizes social expectations regarding:
How society should view the sick
How the sick should behave
Evaluating the Sick Role
Critique of the Sick Role Model
According to conflict theorists:
Deviance is necessary for social change
Studying social control agents important
Sick role model
Doesn’t fit chronic or stigmatized conditions
Ignores class, age, gender, race
Confuses illness with patienthood
Consider: The Sick Role
Think about someone you know who has a chronic illness. To what extent and in what ways does Parsons’ concept of a sick role fit that person’s experiences?
Think about the last time you had an acute illness. How does (and doesn’t) the sick role concept fit that experience?
