We are Living in a Medicalized Society

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Health Care

Document 1

The drive towards new evidence and hypothesis of our conditions, changing social attitudes among the people assert that we are living in a medicalized society. Medicalization and Society Medicalization is better understood and studied from a sociological perspective from how pivotal the role of professionals, patients and institutions play in defining the life of an individual. The implications of the determination based on medicalization on ordinary people demonstrate the sociological risk of the practice that is evident in contemporary medical practice. People’s self-identity is injured, and medical decisions rely on the common medical concepts of health and illness about their condition that might be misleading to the patient (Gabe, Bury & Elston, 2004, 52). The sociological impact of medicalization outlines the significant threat the practice has on innocent lives and individual interpretation of their condition primarily on how the society perceives the medical alignment to the state.

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Several disorders that have been medicalized based on the analysis of Conrad and other sociologists put the expenditure at $ 77. 1 billion in 2005 from the total medical spending (Conrad, 2007, 112). The amount represents 3. 9% of the total domestic health care expenditure relating to payments to hospitals, pharmacists, health care providers and different practitioners. Even though the expenditure does not represent a bigger percentage of the health care spending in the country, the 3. The increased demand has led to the positioning of interested parties such as pharmaceuticals and medical practitioners to profit from the demand thereby enhancing the growth of medicalization. Every society around the world is faced with significant challenges that people face in daily living, and medical practitioners have taken on a move to link such conditions to an occurrence that requires medical intervention.

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The application of scientific interventions is fundamental towards improving the ability to tackle different medical conditions that threaten human life. The connection of such conditions through the medical narrative establishes preconditions that are understood to be related to specific symptoms of an illness that will be subjected to treatment (Freund, McGuire & Podhurst, 2003, 14). The contemporary society extensively depends on science and medicine to address several health conditions among the people hence provides practitioners with authority to influence people's perspective (Williams and Calnan, 1996, 266). Medicalization asserts inappropriate effects on social lives of the people. The risk of inadequate treatment interventions, social stigma, iatrogenic illness, costs of medication and the opportunity costs resulting from the allocation of resources that would have been utilized to take care of severe medical conditions (Freund, McGuire & Podhurst, 2003, 108).

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Medicalization of society is alive and a substantive threat to social progress due to the inability to create solutions for personal problems. Moreover, the practice only seeks to provide temporary solutions to lasting personal issues that require a comprehensive approach to solving the challenges. A sociological mechanism would come in handy since it offers answers to the social behavior and attitudes of people towards several aspects of social life. It is imperative to agree that the contribution of medicalization ideologies developed a new era of psychological treatment that improved the understanding of challenges faced by people (Nettleton, 2006, 25). Despite the spirited criticism against the medicalization propositions and investigations, it has been crystal clear that in some occasion’s medicalization managed to set the basis for the contemporary insight for improvements attained.

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The advancement on a psychological perspective has impacted positively towards the analysis to help patients suffering and enabling the coming up with appropriate treatment consistently. The changing times made it critical to advance the development of medicalization that improves on the broad set of theoretical orientations for a robust methodology for handling patients. Conclusion In conclusion, it is without a doubt based on the happenings in contemporary society that we are living in a medicalized society. A. Medicalisation: a multi-dimensional concept.  Social Theory & Health, 3(3), 228-241. Becker, G. Nachtigall, R. & Podhurst, L. S. (2003) Health, Illness and the Social Body. 4rd edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. (2010) Anticipating infertility: Egg freezing, genetic preservation, and risk. Gender and Society 24:526  Nettleton, S. (2006) The Sociology of Health & Illness.

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