Social Construction

Social construction is broadly defined as a phenomenon or experience where individuals or members of the society create his or her notions or perceptions of reality (Brown, 1995). The knowledge itself is the product of social dynamics rather than formulation of law or works of nature (Brown, 1995). In simple words, there is no objective reality; there exists only our own interpretations of reality. In the context of illness and disease, social construction of illness simply means, people shaping and formulating their own ideas or conception of what illness is like. To illustrate this phenomenon in illness context, depression and dementia are chosen to highlight and illustrate the works of social construction and its multiplying effects of these

It is not a disease in itself, but rather a group of symptoms that may accompany certain diseases. They are both different in their biomedical model however, they face a similair social discourse- social construction. Depression and dementia are chosen to highlight more distinctly the contrast in perception of conditions between mental and non-mental illnesses. It is also to show more explicitly how these conditions are labeled differently despite having a commonality- deviant. These conditions are paired and chosen over others as it has more classic signs and symptoms easily observed by lay people. This paired condition also illustrates more clearly the difference in level of stigmatization. This essay aims to explicate how these conditions are framed and labeled by members of the society and the involvement of various agencies in the construction of these illnesses as well as the consequences of socially constructing them. My argument centers with the notion that while treating the biological disease, we must also address the social meaning of illness

One key element is the Medicalisation process where it is the re-defining of normal, human bodily experiences in terms of medical categories (Conrad, 1992). The process of medicalisation is governed by the prestige of biomedical framework and medically trained personnels. Bond (1992), points out on a negative note that medical expertise plays a key role in this discourse as they possess a wealth of medical knowledge, an added advantage which lay people do not have. This implicitly gives power and authority to these medical professions to control the diagnosis and treatment (Freidson,1970). Hence they take part in the disease labelling process where they set the benchmark and determine who falls under the normal or outliner category. Thus this process allows medical profession to go beyond the role of healing the sick to become arbiters of the drawing of boundaries between normal and deviant-those who do not conform or act in smilar ways as the general public. Thus this aptly illustrates Becker’s (1963) labelling theory that 'social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance'. By framing deviants as violating rules constructed by social groups, we inevitably label them as ‘outliners of society’. Hence we say that deviants are successful being labeled. This is greatly manifested in the realm of mental illnesses