Sick Case Study

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Recommended: Illness and health as a social problem

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

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