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Illness and health as a social problem
Illness and health as a social problem
Sociological theories of health and illness
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Sociologists are mainly concerned with the social production of diseases rather than focusing on the biological causes of diseases. According to sociologist, illness can be sociologically explained by focusing on political, social, cultural and economic environment. Hence, from a sociological perspective social, cultural and economic conditions are the root cause of development of diseases rather than biological factor. At the same time, there is always a situation of conflict between the ‘structure and agency’ for causing a disease. Who is responsible for emergence of disease?- The social structure i.e. social, cultural, political or economic conditions or life-style of a person. Germov (2005) in his work ‘Imaging health problems …show more content…
The main emphasis of this perspective is on value consensus, social order, stability, and functional processes at macro-level of society According to him, health is functional for the society and sickness is deviance that is dysfunctional for the society. Parson studied sickness from sociological point of view. The main focus of sociological approach is to explain the chronic illness from functional disabilities point of view. Parson’s sick role concept was mainly used to focus upon the social aspects related to living with the acute diseases. Sick role is the temporary condition where the person changes his or her normal lifestyle and roles, to play the role of a sick person. Such a person is supposed to withdraw from normal activities, take sufficient rest and adhere to the advice of a physician. This leads to recovery from an illness and normalization of life. Since in case of chronic illness, complete recovery from illness and normalization of life is doubtful, Parson (1978) defended his concept of sick role by stating that despite the failure of complete recovery still sick role makes sense in chronic illness also. According to Parson, in case of chronic illness, the further degeneration of the body can be checked by following the doctor’s advice based on scientifically diagnostic
During 1951 Parson was the first to debate about the sick role. According to Parson, there are the few expectations which need to be met before considering individual sick. Firstly, individual should not cause their own health problem an example could be by eating a high-fat food which leads to overweight and linked to type 2 diabetes. An individual receives a less sympathy. Secondly, individual who is sick must adamant to get well otherwise will see as faking the illness. Thirdly, an individual illness should be confirmed by a physician so they can follow the instruction. The relationship between the physician and the patient is hierarchical where the instruction is provided by the physician and followed by the
In “How Doctors Die,” Dr. Ken Murray explains some different real stories about people having terminal diseases, and how their doctors and physicians treat them. Moreover, the author mentions about difficult decisions that not only the doctors but patients and the patients’ family also have to choose. When the patients’ diseases become critical, the doctors have to do whatever they can to help the patients, such as surgical treatment, chemotherapy, or radiation, but they cannot help the patients in some cases. In additions, doctors still die by critical diseases, too. Although they are doctors, they are just normal people and cannot resist all of the diseases. Like other patients, the doctors having critical diseases want to live instead of
In order to understand medical terminology it is essential to know the meaning behind certain words that are used to describe sickness and how those terms have different connotations in each culture. Understanding the semantics of medical terminology can not only help the clinician treat the patient, but it sheds light on the different components that each word represents within a global perspective. Some words that have been interpreted and adjusted to fit social constructions include disease, illness, health, and sickness.
The biomedical model of health has been criticised because it fails to include the psychological and social causes relating to an individual’s medical illness or health, looking only at the biological causes (Giddens and Sutton, 2013). Therefore, sociologists being aware of the impacts of social structure and lifestyle on health have put in various efforts to place the study of ‘the social’ at the core of health and healthcare examination.
Conrad, who was a medical sociology teacher discusses how the way they classify disease and illness has changed over time. Conrad talks about how illnesses, that are “behavioral,” mental illnesses, has become medical diagnosis and medical treatments, medicalization. Medicalization is defined as a process in which nonmedical problems are not being classified as medical problems. Conrad touches on the rise of medicalization, the social factors that have influenced it. Medicalization, viewed as a social construct, it is a form of collective action. Medicalization would have not happened if it wasn’t from the support of physicians and the medical professions, they were central to this whole medicalization. The controversies and critiques of medicalization
It was found that the “social deviance represented by the ill - sections of the population who abandoned social roles (for example, employees, mothers, soldiers) so essential to the maintenance and longevity of the social organism” (Thomas 2012). Because of the threat of sickness affecting the eminence of society as a human body, functionalists believe that doctors are holders of patients status which maintain the order of the biological society. The theorist Emile Durkheim believed that medicine could play a crucial role in determining social normal and abnormal. The use of medical sociology “thrived on this normal/deviant dualism, not least because medical sociology mirrored the enlightenment inspired normal/pathological bifurcation in medicine” (Thomas 2012). By the use of medicine, doctors are able to regulate the access to the sick role and its benefits. Through this ability to regulate the sick role, doctors are also able to determine the proper function of those in society who are sick and how they will affect the structure of society. This control of how sick individuals is given to a member of society who will occupy a high social class due to the occupational prestige they have gained. By a member of the elite group to stabilities and balance society, they are able to justify the status quo, in return maintaining their power over sick individuals. This ability to have control over a lower social status is not to claim that they are of higher power but that there are structural valuables which affect their ability to have power over
Health and illness narratives have long been part of the healthcare setting, however in more recent times, the biomedical model of healthcare with its facts and finding methodology has been the more common structure of healthcare. A byproduct of healthcare systems structured in such a way is it fails to focus itself on patient centered care and as such the treatment of a patient fails to establish and treat the cause of the issue.
A Functionalist perspective: This perspective regards illness as socially deviant behaviour which requires social control. Being defined as ill legitimises exemption from the responsibilities of daily life. The condition, however, is that the patient seeks help and cooperates with the doctor. The ill person has a requirement to attempt to be healed, and the doctor is obligated to help the
Having considered the physiological health complications, this case study now moves on to focus on the issues requiring psycho-sociological interventions.
Sociology started to develop in European countries around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries due to various social and economical factors. As society evolved, so did the industrial economy, cities started to expand, there were new political movements and people became more aware of the changes and different behaviors within the society. As a result of these factors a new social science erupted which was crowned with the name Sociology by the French thinker Auguste Comte. Sociology as a science may be defined as being guided by the core comprehension on social matters as our lives are influenced by our unique attributes, as well as by our role in the social world. In order to make a sociology study, the sociological imagination should be used in the micro level as well as in the macro level. The micro level regards the ability to analyze behavior beyond the individual in causing success or failure while on the other hand the macro level comprehends how society influences on the outcomes of the study. According to the American sociologists C. Wright Mills, expanding a sociological imagination, “helps you understand your place in a complex world.” However in order to develop this sociological imagination we must grasp as well as understand the history and the circumstances of the social situation we may want to analyze. Sociology elaborates the correlation between the choices of the individual and the social forces that influence it and the comprehension of this correlation enables us to develop our sociological imagination.
Health is one of the most important aspects of human life. To be a healthy person one should be physically, mentally, socially and spiritually healthy and free from diseased condition. A poor prognosis is the prediction of patient health condition in present and future by the health care professionals so that both the patient as well as family will be aware about result within the treatment period. Similarly, patient undergoing through newly diagnosed health condition with poor prognosis not only affects individual but also their family member, health care professionals friends and loved ones has to face the situation. Person diagnosed with life threatening disease affects various aspects of health such as emotional, physical, psychological, social and behavioral and this essay will focus on above responses by providing some developmental theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson and Kohlberg. Poor prognosis also has the direct
Sociologists develop theories to explain and analyze society at different levels and from different perspectives. Sociologists study everything from the micro level of analysis of small social patterns to the “big picture” which is the macro level of analysis of large social patterns.
Being sick or ill robs you of your quality of life. It affects you and your family and persons close to you. The more serious the illness the more the stress, anxiety and pain, the more difficult it is for all close to you. Stress is mainly caused by pain and the effects of illness.
Recent studies have suggested that there are three definitions of health, which can be used in different contexts to examine the well-being of a patient. These are the absence of disease, the ability to manage the stresses associated with daily life and the act of equilibrating self with external environments.2 These alternative definitions may be more appropriate in the present, especially when used in application to people suffering with chronic
To Quote Anthony Giddens: "Sociology is the study of human social life, groups and societies. It is a dazzling and compelling enterprise, having as its subject matter our own behaviour as social beings. The scope of sociology is extremely wide, ranging from the analysis of passing encounters between individuals in the street up to the investigation of world-wide social processes“(1989). Gidden’s statement describes sociology as a study that helps us understand our own behaviour as human beings in a social word. Sociologist study everything from the interaction between people in the street to the interaction between different countries. Sociologists aim to study how societies have changed over, how societies are structured and organized, the norms of society. It’s also important to understand that not all sociologists agree with each other, Sociologists often debate with one another to prove/disprove certain theories and concepts. By studying Sociology is it helps us analyze social conflicts on a micro and macro scope. Through a macro level, we can study large-scale social organization and large social categories it also examinees social processes and patterns society as a whole. We can analyze individuals much deeper on a micro level. This way we study a human by face-to face interactions. Its important as humans to understand the way our society came together and the reasons to how elements work and function together. Sociology gives us a deeper