Alison Higgins
Medical Sociology
June 22nd, 2017
Question 2: Medicalization and Social Control
As medicalization becomes prevalent with new medical “breakthroughs”, more and more things are being considered conditions, where they were once just a part of life. Sleep disorders, ADHD, PTSD, and infertility, replace what were once considered part of the human condition. As society progresses, medicalization continues to happen. New testing and new minds come up with medical explanations for numerous dysfunctions. This medicalization is fueled by cultural pressures and social control. Powerful people make impacts in a number of fields including medical and psychological studies. Societies acceptance or rejection of these conditions greatly impacts the lives of those that are living with them,
“Medicalization describes a process by which nonmedical problems become
defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses or
Disorders” (Conrad 209). Essentially medicalization occurs when someone decides that a patient’s complaints can be seen as a medical issue, and need to be addressed. If a medical professional does not see a complaint as something medical it will not be addressed as such. “How seriously a patient’s complaints are taken by her physician or others around her will depend substantially on whether the human condition in which she finds herself has been medicalized” (Reiheld 73). If a patient’s complaints fit into a category that has been medicalized the physician will take these complaints more seriously and try to treat that person. This can be relieving for patients who have suffered from issues without knowing why, but it can be frustrating for others. Some people feel healthy, but because of medicalization they are diagnosed with a condition and in some cases society treats them as though they are unhealthy.
The medicalization of deviance can have both good and bad affects on people. In one aspect it can be hard for a person to be seen as sick even if they do not feel unhealthy. “A person with a condition that has been medicalized who feels perfectly healthy might be diagnosed by medical professionals and treated as sick by society regardless of whether she acknowledges that there is anything at all the matter” (Reiheld 73). A big example of this is when homosexuality was medicalized and could even be found in the DSM classified as a mental illness until the DSM II came out in 1973. People who felt completely healthy were seen as sick by society. This led to different kinds of treatments to try and cure homosexuality, homosexuals were seen as mentally ill and a stigma was attached to them.
Alternatively, other people benefit from the medicalization on their symptoms. “Behaviors that were once defined as immoral, sinful or criminal have been given medical meaning, moving them from badness to sickness” (Conrad 6). Nymphomaniacs went from being seen as just pervers people, to now having their issues recognized as a mental illness, allowing them to participate in treatments and therapies to help them. Alcoholism and drug addiction has become medicalized and are now seen in the medical world as diseases, and can now be treated as such. With a change in view from the medical standpoint we also see a shift in how society sees these people. People who were once just seen as different, or showed abnormal behaviors, face less ridicule when they are seen as having an illness or disease. The context changes and people are no longer seen so much as social deviants.
Medicalization is not cut and dry. Things are fluid, they change and they are influenced by many other aspects. Conrad comments that “ There are constraints on medicalization including competing definitions, costs of medical care, absence of support in the medical profession, limits on insurance coverage and the like.” (7) All of these things help to determine if a condition will be medicalized. Medical categories change, and new definitions lead to overlaps in diagnoses. When the definition for Alzheimer’s disease changed, it covered a lot of cases that would have once been considered senile dementia, and now Alzheimer’s is one of the top causes of death in the united states.
Similarly some people push for demedicalization on certain conditions, and hope to change what is and is not considered a medical issue. “For demedicalization to occur, the problem must no longer be defined in medical terms, and medical treatments can no longer be seen as appropriate interventions” (Conrad 7). As times progress more things that were once considered medical issues are now drifting further from that. People have organized to demedicalize disability. To stop these differences from being seen as medical problems. “The most notable example is homosexuality, which was demedicalized in the 1970s” (Conrad 7). However, the medicalization of some things like childbirth and death remain unchanged regardless of how society pushes against it. In cases like alcoholism, the medical profession is only involved to a small degree, which depicts a lower level of medicalization without it being completely demedicalized all together.
In short, Medicalization feeds into and encourages social control. No social construct has more control than the medical profession. This cohort can decide what is natural and what is not. What is seen as a medical issue and what continues to be a normal life process. As Conrad and Schneider point out “ The greatest social control power comes from having the authority to define certain behaviors, persons, and things” (Conrad 8). The greatest social power comes from being able to define a person’s actions or ailments. The confined of what is considered to be normal human behavior continues to become more and more narrow as medical professionals continue to medicalize what were once thought to be signs of the human condition. “Critics have been concerned that medicalization transforms aspects of everyday life into pathologies, narrowing the range of what is considered acceptable” (Conrad 7). As we medicalize different aspects of the human condition we are giving the control over to medical professionals. The medicalization opens the doors for treatment. In instances like ADHD, what was once considered to be part of life is now a medical issue which gives medical professionals the ability to treat issues like this with medications, surgeries or a series of other procedures, or treatment paths.
The increase in medicalization may also be influenced by people’s growing inability to tolerate discomfort. Conditions that are medicalized now were seen as just an aspect of life years ago. As medical advances continue, professionals are putting labels on issues that were not seen as medical in the past. Not all those involved in the medical profession support the medicalization of some conditions. As conrad points out “ The medical profession and individual doctors may only be marginally involved with the management of alcoholism, and actual medical treatments are not requisites for medicalization” (Conrad 6). Essentially in this aspect social groups and movements are what prompted the medicalization of Alcoholism, and is what similarly fuels the view of drug addiction as a disease.
As a whole medicalization has a major impact on society and gives a major amount of social control to the medical profession. Medical professionals have the power the diagnose and label all aspects of the human condition. From birth to death there is a level of medical involvement in our lives. If a behavior is seen as something other than normal it is open to medicalization. ADHD, sleep disorders, and Menopause are all conditions that are monitored and treated by medical professionals when they were once just seen as a part of life. Medicalization can add labels and stigmas on to people. Depict them to society as sick or unhealthy, and society reacts to that and treats these people differently because of it. It is, in some cases harder to have an obscure diagnoses like Chronic Fatigue than it is to have a more widely accepted illness like cancer, or diabetes, because society knows and accepts those conditions. With medicalization comes confusion and in some cases social rejection. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. As what were once seen as normal parts of life, become medicalized, people have a hard time accepting them as medical issues and that may result in negative situations for the people who have these new conditions. I think medicalization is both positive and negative. As the medical profession advances, solutions to everyday problems are coming forwards and people are getting the treatment they need to improve their lives. Alternatively, people who have diagnoses that are harder to understand, or that do not reflect how they feel, face adverse reactions from society.
Works Cited
-Conrad, P. (2007) The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
-Conrad, P. “Medicalization and Social Control.” Annual Review of Sociology 18.1 (1992): 209-32. Web.
-Reiheld, Alison. “Patient Complains of â¦: How Medicalization Mediates Power and Justice.” IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 3.1 (2010): 72-98. Web.
