Medicalization: The Study of Deviance Essays

The four theories of deviance are The Learning Theory, The Strain Theory, The Social-Bond Theory and the Labeling Theory. These theories alone can explain the reasoning behind someone’s deviant behavior. But, in There Are No Children Here we see all of these theories being demonstrated. This lets us have an understanding of exactly why we are seeing the deviant behavior that we are.

In the sociology of medicine Parson (1951) regarded medicine as functional in social terms. By tackling the person’s problems in medical terms the tendency towards deviance that was represented by ill health could be safely directed, until they could return to their normal self. (Lawrence 1994: p 64-65: BMJ 2004: Parson cited in Gabe, Bury & Elston 2006, p 127).

"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system are not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in

Throughout history society has had many views on individuals with physical and health needs, consequently impacting the way they live. In the article, “The Discovery of Hyperkinesis: Notes on the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior,” it discuses the Pharmaceutical Revolution, and how psychoactive drugs were being produced to suppress, what society felt, was deviant behavior (Conrad, 1975). This article is a good example of how society has created ‘disabilities’ for people with health needs. The article also expresses how children who act out, or have parents and schools members feeling they are exhibiting deviant behaviors, are considered to have medical conditions. Many people in today’s society don’t have the time or patience to learn about individuals with physical and health needs, thus giving the medical world more control over, ‘disability.’

Unfair competition and socialism amongst physicians and medical students emerged as medicine advanced and health departments were formed. “Nurses in schools were resisted by physicians who would lose some patients if they were cared for at school--city (New York City Health Department) pointed out that they would gain more patients by referral--physicians prevented them from doing any significant medical care.” (Starr.) The demand for care increased as the use of checkups and health exams--insurance, job, school became more commonly used in day-to-day practice. Chapter 5 also introduced a new idea of germ theory, “in the first half of the nineteenth century, some authorities attributed epidemics to cotagonian and recommended quarantines-an ecomonically damaging measure.”

It hasn’t changed that the average person doesn’t like to feel pain or be ill. The evolution of medicine from 1776 to 1938 in the United States depended on the knowledge of current diseases and treatment at that time. The major diseases during this time were pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections, heart disease and cerebrovascular disease.1 Ironically, much of those diseases still exist today. Over time, the world’s demand for drugs for any type of illness or disease drastically skyrocketed. Was the medicine really working or were people psyched into believing they had an illness? The diagnosis and treatment was incorrect many times, resulting in “shoulda, coulda, and wouldas” when dealing with diagnosis and medicine. Without a scientific basis, medical doctors, such as Benjamin Rush were ineffective with proper treatment, and quacks promoted strange treatments as to say: Yackedy Quack, Don’t Talk Back. By the end of the 20th Century, one could say American medicine was on the rise and researchers and physician were much more respected.

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night, you’re sweating, coughing, and starting to throw up. In today’s world, doctors are available for situations like these. Before the 1800’s, doctors were not as common, and their techniques were questionable. It wasn’t until the 1800’s, that doctors and scientists began discovering and creating medicines and vaccines to help cure sickness and disease. During the 1800’s, there were very many medical advancements. Because there were a lot of medical advancements, there were conflictions such as medical/scientific concerns, ethical concerns, legal changes, and how the economy was affected.

Even though this occurrence happened almost 70 years ago, the prevalent themes still exist today. The allure of pharmaceutical money and the use of drugs on patients, for instance, sway some doctors, even when they are unnecessary or, worse, harmful (Koch 1). Reading about Lacks, it is clearly recognizable how necessary it is to have a moral compass in a field that requires utter respect towards

We can see the sociological imagination in our everyday lives. The sociological imagination can be seen through an example of medicalization. Medicalization is defined as considering a behavior as a medical problem or disease and then mandating the medical profession to provide some treatment for it. Some examples of medicalization are ADHD, obesity,

Illich (1990) even went as to say that themedical proffesion (including pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment suppliers) have a vested interest in illness so they create illnesses which have to be treated by doctors and drugs etc. this means conditions that used to be seen as natural, such as dying or unhappiness have now undergone a social iatrogenesis (doctor caused illness) whereby people cannot handle their own health anymore. postmodernists dislike this use of medical discourse because one theory has more prestige that it should be considered the truth.

Deviant behavior is something that is usually disapproved and it is when someone goes against the ‘norms’ of society. According to the American Psychiatric Association (2015), mental illness is technically a health condition involving changes in behavior, emotion, or thinking. So where does mental illness come in to play with being a deviant behavior? Well, shockingly mental illness and deviance go hand in hand quite often. Everyone who is considered a ‘deviant’ may not be mentally ill, however, majority of people diagnosed with a mental illness are considered deviant. When sociologists study deviance, they are also studying mental illness. Mental illness is something that clearly will imply some sort of deviation from the defined norms of society.

In today’s current medical models there is belief that people who behave strangely are labeled as “sick”. Another is that some people cannot control their outcome of having an illness. Because of this it is up to us to have a sort of responsibility towards and over them. The type of treatments that these people need are only supposed to

The conceptualisation of medicine as an institution of societal control was first theorised by Parsons (1951), and from this stemmed the notion of the deviant termed illness in which the “sick role” was a legitimised condition. The societal reaction and perspective was deemed a pillar of the emerging social construction of disease and conception of the formalised medical model of disease. Concerns surrounding medicalisation fundamentally stem from the fusion of social and medical concerns wherein the lines between the two are gradually blurred and the the social consequences of the proliferation of disease diagnosis that results from such ambiguities of the social medical model.

Townsend and Davidson (1988) also suggested that the term health is derived from the word “whole”, which is a recipient of the healing process. Therefore, an attempt to heal or cure in medical field literally means, to make whole or restore health. It is this idea that influences medicine to adopt a mechanistic approach towards disease management thereby obscuring the understanding of health in human context of well-being, which advocates for alternative or complementary approaches. This viewpoint also reflects in some definitions and the medical model discussed above. The criticisms of the medical by Illich (1974) is that the medical view only deals with the cause of disease or illness rather than the external factors affecting the person’s health. Within different sections of medicine, for example the mental health department, there are marked differences when explaining the origin of illness, disease and treatments.

Written about the structure and culture of biomedical heath care and a society that is attempting to prolong aging, Medicare funding, funding and development of research, and today’s definition of standard care, Sharon Kaufman brings to light the many dilemmas posed to the American health care system. Her ethnographic story, Ordinary Medicine: Extraordinary Treatments, Longer Lives and Where to Draw the Line reveals the booming biomedical research and clinical trials industry, the power held by Medicare and private insurance, and a rapidly changing standard of care once a medical treatment is considered reimbursable. This leads to systematic changes in the standard of care result in a massive amount of pressure being placed upon doctors, patients and families to make an ethically and medically sound decision in refusing or accepting therapy. Kaufman exposes the driving forces behind the expansion of biomedicine, society’s response to the growing industry on a personal and bureaucratic level.