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Medicalization
Medicalization is the process by which human conditions and problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions, and thus become the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment. Medicalization can be driven by new evidence or hypotheses about conditions; by changing social attitudes or economic considerations; or by the development of new medications or treatments. Medicalization is studied from a sociologic perspective in terms of the role and power of professionals, patients, and corporations, and also for its implications for ordinary people whose self-identity and life decisions may depend on the prevailing concepts of health and illness. Once a condition is classified as medical, a medical model of disability tends to be used in place of a social model. Medicalization may also be termed ''pathologization'' or (pejoratively) "disease mongering". Since medicalization is the social process through which a condition becomes a medical disease in need ...
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Iatrogenesis
Iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence. "Iatrogenic", ''Merriam-Webster.com'', Merriam-Webster, Inc., accessed 27 Jun 2020. First used in this sense in 1924, the term was introduced to sociology in 1976 by Ivan Illich, alleging that industrialized societies impair quality of life by overmedicalizing life."iatrogenesis"
''A Dictionary of Sociology'', . updated 31 May 2020.
Iatrogenesis may thus include mental suffering via medical beliefs or a practitioner's statements. Some iatrogenic ...
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Medical Sociology
Medical sociology is the sociological analysis of medical organizations and institutions; the production of knowledge and selection of methods, the actions and interactions of healthcare professionals, and the social or cultural (rather than clinical or bodily) effects of medical practice. The field commonly interacts with the sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies, and social epistemology. Medical sociologists are also interested in the qualitative experiences of patients, often working at the boundaries of public health, social work, demography and gerontology to explore phenomena at the intersection of the social and clinical sciences. Health disparities commonly relate to typical categories such as class and race. Objective sociological research findings quickly become a normative and political issue. Early work in medical sociology was conducted by Lawrence J Henderson whose theoretical interests in the work of Vilfredo Pareto inspired Talcott Parsons inter ...
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Medical Conditions
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are associated with specific signs and symptoms. A disease may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions. For example, internal dysfunctions of the immune system can produce a variety of different diseases, including various forms of immunodeficiency, hypersensitivity, allergy, allergies and autoimmune disorders. In humans, ''disease'' is often used more broadly to refer to any condition that causes pain, Abnormality (behavior), dysfunction, distress (medicine), distress, social problems, or death to the person affected, or similar problems for those in contact with the person. In this broader sense, it sometimes includes injury, injuries, disability, disabilities, #Disorder, disorders, s ...
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Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz ( ; hu, Szász Tamás István ; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. His books ''The Myth of Mental Illness'' (1961) and ''The Manufacture of Madness'' (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him. Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not "illnesses" in the sense that physical illnesses are, and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases ...
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Ivan Illich
Ivan Dominic Illich ( , ; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book '' Deschooling Society'' criticises modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that constrains learning to narrow situations in a fairly short period of the human lifespan. His 1975 book ''Medical Nemesis'', importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, argues that industrialised society widely impairs quality of life by overmedicalising life, pathologizing normal conditions, creating false dependency, and limiting other more healthful solutions. Illich called himself "an errant pilgrim." Biography Early life Ivan Dominic Illich was born on 4 September 1926 in Vienna, Austria, to Gian Pietro Ilic (Ivan Peter Illich) and Ellen Rose "Maexie" née Regenstreif-Ortlieb. His father was a civil engineer and a diplomat from a landed Catholic family of Dalmatia, with property in the ...
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ADHD
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inappropriate. ADHD symptoms arise from executive dysfunction, and emotional dysregulation is often considered a core symptom. In children, problems paying attention may result in poor school performance. ADHD is associated with other neurodevelopmental and mental disorders as well as some non-psychiatric disorders, which can cause additional impairment, especially in modern society. Although people with ADHD struggle to focus on tasks they are not particularly interested in completing, they are often able to maintain an unusually prolonged and intense level of attention for tasks they do find interesting or rewarding; this is known as hyperfocus. The precise causes of ADHD are unknown in the majority of cases. Genetic factors play an import ...
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Hyperkinetic Disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inappropriate. ADHD symptoms arise from executive dysfunction, and emotional dysregulation is often considered a core symptom. In children, problems paying attention may result in poor school performance. ADHD is associated with other neurodevelopmental and mental disorders as well as some non-psychiatric disorders, which can cause additional impairment, especially in modern society. Although people with ADHD struggle to focus on tasks they are not particularly interested in completing, they are often able to maintain an unusually prolonged and intense level of attention for tasks they do find interesting or rewarding; this is known as hyperfocus. The precise causes of ADHD are unknown in the majority of cases. Genetic factors play an importa ...
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Allen Frances
Allen J. Frances (born 2 October 1942) is an American psychiatrist. He is currently Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He is best known for serving as chair of the American Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the development and revision of the fourth edition of the ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM-IV). Frances is the founding editor of two well-known psychiatric journals: the ''Journal of Personality Disorders'' and the ''Journal of Psychiatric Practice''. During the development of the current diagnostic manual, DSM-5, Frances became critical of the expanding boundaries of psychiatry and the medicalization of normal human behavior, problems he contends are leading to the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of the "worried well" and the gross undertreatment of the severely ill. In recent years, Frances has become a vocal advocate for improved treatment an ...
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Peter Conrad (sociologist)
Peter Conrad (born 1945, raised in New Rochelle, NY) is an American medical sociologist who has researched and published on numerous topics including ADHD, the medicalization of deviance, the experience of illness, wellness in the workplace, genetics in the news, and biomedical enhancements. Biography He has been a member of the faculty at Brandeis University since 1979 and since 1993 has been the Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences. He received his B.A. in Sociology at State University of New York at Buffalo (1967), M.A, from Northeastern University (1970) and Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston University in 1976. Prior to Brandeis, he taught at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts (1971–75) and Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa (1975–78). At Brandeis he served as chair of the Department of Sociology for nine years and since 2002 as chair of the interdisciplinary program "Health: Science, Society and Policy" (HSSP). He has also been a visiting professor at ...
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Disease Mongering
Disease mongering is a pejorative term for the practice of widening the diagnostic boundaries of illnesses and aggressively promoting their public awareness in order to expand the markets for treatment. Among the entities benefiting from selling and delivering treatments are pharmaceutical companies, physicians, alternative practitioners and other professional or consumer organizations. It is distinct from the promulgation of bogus or unrecognised diagnoses. Term The term "monger" has ancient roots, providing the basis for many common compound forms such as cheesemonger, fishmonger, and fleshmonger, for those who peddle such wares respectively. "Disease mongering" as a label for the "invention" or promotion of diseases in order to capitalize on their treatment was first used in 1992 by health writer Lynn Payer, who applied it to the Listerine mouthwash campaign against halitosis (bad breath). Payer defined disease mongering as a set of practices which include the following: * ...
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Capitalist
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets. Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include ''laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, state capitalism and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying deg ...
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Robert Spitzer (psychiatrist)
Robert Leopold Spitzer (May 22, 1932 – December 25, 2015) was a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City. He was a major force in the development of the '' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (''DSM''). Education and early years Spitzer was born in White Plains, New York, in 1932. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1953 and his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine in 1957. He completed his psychiatric residency at New York State Psychiatric Institute in 1961 and graduated from Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in 1966. Spitzer wrote an article on Wilhelm Reich's theories in 1953 which the ''American Journal of Psychiatry'' declined to publish. Career Spitzer spent most of his career at Columbia University in New York City as a Professor of Psychiatry until he retired in 2003. He was on the research faculty of the Columbia University ...
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