The Medicalization of Society

The Medicalization of Society PDF Author: Peter Conrad
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801892341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Over the past half-century, the social terrain of health and illness has been transformed. What were once considered normal human events and common human problems—birth, aging, menopause, alcoholism, and obesity—are now viewed as medical conditions. For better or worse, medicine increasingly permeates aspects of daily life. Building on more than three decades of research, Peter Conrad explores the changing forces behind this trend with case studies of short stature, social anxiety, "male menopause," erectile dysfunction, adult ADHD, and sexual orientation. He examines the emergence of and changes in medicalization, the consequences of the expanding medical domain, and the implications for health and society. He finds in recent developments—such as the growing number of possible diagnoses and biomedical enhancements—the future direction of medicalization. Conrad contends that the impact of medical professionals on medicalization has diminished. Instead, the pharmaceutical and biotechnical industries, insurance companies and HMOs, and the patient as consumer have become the major forces promoting medicalization. This thought-provoking study offers valuable insight into not only how medicalization got to this point but also how it may continue to evolve.

The Medicalization of Society

The Medicalization of Society PDF Author: Peter Conrad
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801892341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the past half-century, the social terrain of health and illness has been transformed. What were once considered normal human events and common human problems—birth, aging, menopause, alcoholism, and obesity—are now viewed as medical conditions. For better or worse, medicine increasingly permeates aspects of daily life. Building on more than three decades of research, Peter Conrad explores the changing forces behind this trend with case studies of short stature, social anxiety, "male menopause," erectile dysfunction, adult ADHD, and sexual orientation. He examines the emergence of and changes in medicalization, the consequences of the expanding medical domain, and the implications for health and society. He finds in recent developments—such as the growing number of possible diagnoses and biomedical enhancements—the future direction of medicalization. Conrad contends that the impact of medical professionals on medicalization has diminished. Instead, the pharmaceutical and biotechnical industries, insurance companies and HMOs, and the patient as consumer have become the major forces promoting medicalization. This thought-provoking study offers valuable insight into not only how medicalization got to this point but also how it may continue to evolve.

The Medicalization of Everyday Life

The Medicalization of Everyday Life PDF Author: Thomas Szasz
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815608677
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This collection of impassioned essays, published between 1973 and 2006, chronicles Thomas Szasz’s long campaign against the orthodoxies of “pharmacracy,” that is, the alliance of medicine and the state. From “Diagnoses Are Not Diseases” to “The Existential Identity Thief,” “Fatal Temptation,” and “Killing as Therapy,” the book delves into the complex evolution of medicalization, concluding with “Pharmacracy: The New Despotism.” In practice, society must draw a line between what counts as medical practice and what does not. Where it draws that line goes far in defining the kinds of laws its citizens live under, the kinds of medical care they receive, and the kinds of lives they are allowed to live.

The Medicalization of Marijuana

The Medicalization of Marijuana PDF Author: Michelle Newhart
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429833776
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Winner of the Donald W. Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology Medical marijuana laws have spread across the U.S. to all but a handful of states. Yet, eighty years of social stigma and federal prohibition creates dilemmas for patients who participate in state programs. The Medicalization of Marijuana takes the first comprehensive look at how patients negotiate incomplete medicalization and what their experiences reveal about our relationship with this controversial plant as it is incorporated into biomedicine. Is cannabis used similarly to other medicines? Drawing on interviews with midlife patients in Colorado, a state at the forefront of medical cannabis implementation, this book explores the practical decisions individuals confront about medical use, including whether cannabis will work for them; the risks of registering in a state program; and how to handle questions of supply, dosage, and routines of use. Individual stories capture how patients redefine and reclaim cannabis use as legitimate—individually and collectively—and grapple with an inherently political identity. These experiences help illustrate how stigma, prejudice, and social change operate. By positioning cannabis use within sociological models of medical behavior, Newhart and Dolphin provide a wide-reaching, theoretically informed analysis of the issue that expands established concepts and provides new insight on medical cannabis and how state programs work.

Deviance and Medicalization

Deviance and Medicalization PDF Author: Peter Conrad
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439903492
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
A classic text on deviance is updated and reissued.

The Medicalization of Birth and Death

The Medicalization of Birth and Death PDF Author: Lauren K. Hall
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421433338
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Improving how individuals give birth and die in the United States requires reforming the regulatory, reimbursement, and legal structures that centralize care in hospitals and prevent the growth of community-based alternatives. In 1900, most Americans gave birth and died at home, with minimal medical intervention. By contrast, most Americans today begin and end their lives in hospitals. The medicalization we now see is due in large part to federal and state policies that draw patients away from community-based providers, such as birth centers and hospice care, and toward the most intensive and costliest kinds of care. But the evidence suggests that birthing and dying people receive too much—even harmful—medical intervention. In The Medicalization of Birth and Death, political scientist Lauren K. Hall describes how and why birth and death became medicalized events. While hospitalization provides certain benefits, she acknowledges, it also creates harms, limiting patient autonomy, driving up costs, and causing a cascade of interventions, many with serious side effects. Tracing the regulatory, legal, and financial policies that centralize care during birth and death, Hall argues that medicalization reduces competition, stifles innovation, and prevents individuals from accessing the most appropriate care during their most vulnerable moments. She also examines the profound implications of policy-enforced medicalization on informed consent and shows how medicalization challenges the healthcare community's most foundational ethical commitments. Drawing on interviews with medical and nonmedical healthcare providers, as well as surveys of patients and their families, Hall provides a broad overview of the costs, benefits, and origins of medicalized birth and death. The Medicalization of Birth and Death is required reading for academics, patients, providers, policymakers, and anyone else interested in how policy shapes healthcare options and limits patients and providers during life's most profound moments.

Medicalized Masculinities

Medicalized Masculinities PDF Author: Christopher A. Faircloth
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 143990457X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The first book to examine the male body in relation to the sociology of health and gender.

The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology

The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology PDF Author: William C. Cockerham
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119250676
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
An authoritative, topical, and comprehensive reference to the key concepts and most important traditional and contemporary issues in medical sociology. Contains 35 chapters by recognized experts in the field, both established and rising young scholars Covers standard topics in the field as well as new and engaging issues such as bioterrorism, bioethics, and infectious disease Chapters are thematically arranged to cover the major issues of the sub-discipline Global range of contributors and an international perspective

Hospital Land USA

Hospital Land USA PDF Author: Wendy Simonds
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations — from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies — in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality. This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology.

Identifying Hyperactive Children

Identifying Hyperactive Children PDF Author: Peter Conrad
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351929127
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This is a new and expanded edition of a classic case-study in the medicalization of ADHD, originally published in 1976. The book centres on an empirical study of the process of identifying hyperactive children, providing a perceptive and accessible introduction to the concepts and issues involved. In this revised edition, Peter Conrad sets the original study in context, demonstrating the continuing relevance of his research. He highlights the issues at stake, outlining recent changes in our understanding of ADHD and reviewing recent sociological research. Peter Conrad is Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences at Brandeis University, USA. He has written extensively in the area of medical sociology, publishing nine books and over eighty articles and chapters.

The Sociology of Health and Illness

The Sociology of Health and Illness PDF Author: Peter Conrad
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9781429205580
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description
A text that brings a critical and conceptual sociological orientation to bear on the issues underlying the current health care crisis and on proposed changes in the health system.