Sociology 2246A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Fluoxetine, Seasonal Affective Disorder
10 Mar 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The medicalization of behavior is a result of a professional and social movement that stems from the dominance of the medical model. Medicine has become an agent of social control and plays a major role in the medicalization of society. Medicine is a type of social audience that is tasked with identifying conditions that deviate from the model of health and wellbeing. Aspects of daily life are increasingly being categorized as medical issues. If medicalization is successful, people take on a new set of normative expectations that come from the sick role. Access to the sick role requires certain physiological conditions. The medicalization thesis posits that physical conditions do not, by their nature constitute illness; rather, they require identification and classification, which entail subjective and value-laden considerations - that is, they are socially constructed. Friedson argues that medicine constructs illness through judging normality and abnormality. Symptoms are informed by assumptions about health and illness.
