Medicalization: The Study of Deviance

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In the world that we live in today, many people would find it difficult to imagine living in a world where medicine and treatment are not readily available. The replacement of religious explanations to medical and scientific explanations has become a means of social control. If a person is in pain, they can easily set up an appointment with a doctor and receive some sort of medical diagnosis. However, there are certain instances where a problem has not been medicalized, or recognized as a medical problem, and their issue will be dismissed completely. The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest delves into the idea of medicalization and how it can be used for the good, or for the bad, in terms of the “sick role.” Medicalization in the “deviant” world can help people define whether their behavior is an illness; however, it can also cause great amounts of trouble by keeping the person under “control” with treatments, or through labeling the person within a society as “deviant.”

Medicalization is a process in which certain medical problems and troubles are defined and classified as a medical illness. In terms of deviance, medicalization can occur to a sickness that deviates from the assumed social state of health—something that is not classified as normal. However, in order to define an “abnormal” behavior as medical, there needs to be a demand that some form of treatment should exist, and a licenses professional should provide that treatment (Conrad, 1992, p. 210). There is also what Chalfant and Noble refer to as the “the medicalization of deviance,” which implies a shift from a legal perspective to a medical one (1979, p.792). These so-called “deviant” problems can be associated with alcoholism and drug abuse. On the other hand i...

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...—illnesses became medicalized where previous “illnesses” are seen as normal occurrences, becoming de-medicalized in the process (i.e., homosexuality). Society continues to control the medical realm as beliefs and ideas are revamped to fit the culture in that modern-day.

Works Cited

Chalfant, H. Paul, & Noble, Dorinda N. (1979). The transition to medicalized views, alcoholism

and social workers. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 792-804.

Conrad, Peter. (1992). Medicalization and social control. Annual Review of Sociology, 18,

209-232.

Conrad, Peter. (2005). The shifting engines of medicalization. Journal of Health and Social

Behavior, 46(3), 2-14.

Goldstein, Joseph, & Katz, Jay. (1963). Abolish the “insanity defense”—why not?. The Yale

Law Journal, 72, 853-876.

Milos, Forman (Director). (1975). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [DVD].

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