HEALTH RELATED ISSUES

Key Concepts

• Disability: A condition where physical or mental impairments limit activities, but its perception is shaped by societal attitudes and structures.

• Medicalization: The process of defining and treating non-medical issues as medical problems.

• Institutionalization: The practice of placing individuals in institutions (e.g., mental hospitals, prisons).

• Morbidity: The rate of illness or disease within a population.

• Mortality: The rate of death within a population.

Disability

• Traditionally viewed as a deviation from the normal body

• Sociology distinguishes:

  • People with impairments – Have physical differences making certain actions difficult or impossible.

  • Disabled people – Viewed as abnormal and in need of help to be like able-bodied people.

• Sociologists argue, that having an impairment is being different, while being disabled is the result of prejudice which sees people with impairments as inferior.

• Oliver (1990): Disability should be seen as a social problem, shaped by societal and economic structures.

• Finkelstein (1980): Industrialization led to the exclusion of impaired individuals, treating them as abnormal. These individuals were then institutionalized and tried to be cured.

Medicalization

• Conrad (1992): Non-medical issues are defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness or disorders.

• Zola (1983): The process whereby more and more of everyday life comes under medical dominion.

• Illich argues that conditions that might otherwise have been ignored, or seen as a social problem, have all been defined as medical issues, making the situation worse.

• Iatrogenesis (illness/ social problems cause by medicalization):

  • Clinical iatrogenesis – Many technological and pharmaceutical ‘advances’ have adverse side effects.

  • Social iatrogenesis – Increased societal reliance on medicine, resulting in a passive, docile population that apply medical interpretations to social and physical events

  • Structural iatrogenesis – Reduced ability to cope with natural body changes.

• Conrad and Schneider argues that even forms of deviance have been medicalized

Institutionalization

• Refers to the process of committing an individual to a mental hospital or prison.

• Based on the English principle that it is the responsibility of society to care for the sick.

• Erving Goffman (1961): Described institutions as "total institutions" that control all aspects of an inmate’s life.

• Deinstitutionalization Movement (1960s, US): Aimed to reduce the population size and number of these institutions.

Morbidity & Mortality

• Morbidity: is sometimes used instead of illness and disease.

• Prevalence is used to measure the level of morbidity in a population.

  • Prevalence rate: (Cases ÷ Total Population) × 100,000.

• Results may vary based on class, gender and ethnic groups.

• Lower class men tend to experience illness and diseases as compared to upper classmen. While women are more likely to quote illnesses and diseases as compared to men.

• Mortality: refers to death

• It is measured using the mortality rate, Which measures the amount of deaths for a particular period per 100,000 people of a population.

  • Varies by social class, gender, and ethnicity.

  • Data collected from official death registries.