The Biomedical Model of Health Essay

In the world that we live in today, many people would find it difficult to imagine living in a world where medicine and treatment are not readily available. The replacement of religious explanations to medical and scientific explanations has become a means of social control. If a person is in pain, they can easily set up an appointment with a doctor and receive some sort of medical diagnosis. However, there are certain instances where a problem has not been medicalized, or recognized as a medical problem, and their issue will be dismissed completely. The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest delves into the idea of medicalization and how it can be used for the good, or for the bad, in terms of the “sick role.” Medicalization in the

Models of illness are used to analyse how illness arises and to predict what treatment might be effective.; Most models are implicit and not formally described.In the context of health and illness, a model will specify what factors are of importance in determining whether a person is ill, (and conversely, by implication, what factors are not relevant). It will also specify the nature of the interrelationships between these factors and being ill

Throughout time, medical personnel intertwine science with religion to comprehend the unexplainable and the incomprehensible. The basis of medical knowledge of the ancient Greek period included observation of a disease and attributing it to religion. However, The Sacred Disease takes the first step to start to value science and rationality over religion and superstition in medicine, but there is not a definitive mark that separates science from religious beliefs. The author addresses the issue of superstition and religion within the medical world and attempts to debunk it by humanizing the religious association of the term ‘divine.’ Even through the primeval medical information during the writings of the ‘sacred disease,’ the author bases

In the medieval western Europe times medical knowledge was ascribe to faith and religion. A physician was not a medical practitioner that was highly respected in this particular time era. Contrary, to the knowledge that some physician might have accumulated, some disease could not be cure by the practitioner; therefore, leaving the patients having to reach out to the hagiographical leader for advice and a cure. Using spiritual remedies as medicine was often prescribed for the sick The hagiographical leader was not just a spiritual doctor in medieval times, they were also medical practitioners that perform miracles with the help of Jesus Christ. Although, society in those times did not have a clear perception of health, they knew that a spiritual existence was involve in the inevitable decision of life and death.

The first time I thought of medicine as a culture was as an undergraduate reading “The Ghost Map” (Johnson, 2006). The book followed the work of Dr. John Snow, a major figure in the field of epidemiology. Snow lived in London during the time of large scale cholera outbreaks in Europe. At the time the school of thought was that cholera was the product of “moral failings” on the part of individuals, as cholera disproportionately hit economically marginalized communities. Another prevailing theory involved the concept of “miasma”; in other words, that an element of the air was to blame for the surge in cholera. Snow realized through his visits to houses hit by cholera that poor sanitation in local water supplies was the causative

Before the years of the Medieval or Dark Ages, medicine and the study of human anatomy was at an all time high with physicians like Galen who discovered much about what the human body was and what diseases were. By 750 AD, the progress in the medical field came to almost a complete stand-still due to the lack of ideas going around and no way of learning. During the Dark Ages, no one knew exactly who illnesses happened, or why, and it was like that for over three hundred years, no fresh ideas coming up until the Renaissance took over. The Church heavily influenced the way medical care was taken, and most scholars depended on Galen and a few famous physicians’ work.

In the past, diseases were based on religion, superstition, and belief but not on science. People used to think that disease is caused by the decision of God. Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, attempts to think about the disease and found to be caused by environmental factors like climate, pollution, lifestyle, and poor nutrition. In the middle ages, quarantine was the only method to keep away from the

In this unit, illness and health are approached as social construct wich provides a new perspective towards the common outlook on medicine. Conrad and Baker argued that culture of illness, the experience of the disease and the medical practices are shaped by society. In accordance with this view, much of our attitude towards illnesses are derived from our own social values rather than empirical science. This is reflected in my own understanding of illnesses. when I get ill, I seek medical help by taking medication or by following conventional method of healing. For instance, with a cold, I take pills, drink plenty of fluid and consume chicken noodle soup. This western remedy that I have adopted would differ from my Chinese parents, who have

During the early modern period, hospitals in Europe's urban centers […] came under the control of nonreligious groups[…] At the same time, more positive ideas of keeping a person's good health and being cured of sickness suggested that illness was

As the pace of social change quickens, children are faced with new social and environmental risks to their growth and development. Of these changes, childhood poverty poses the greatest threat to children 's well-being. One in four American children under the age of 3 years lives in poverty; (Haggerty 1999) a higher percentage of children live in poverty than any other age group. As pediatricians, we know that children in poverty experience a double jeopardy. First, they are more frequently exposed to risks to their health and development (such as lead poisoning, malnutrition, and family dysfunction). Second, children suffer more negative consequences (such as developmental delay and school dysfunction) from such exposure than do children

theory that if a part of the body goes wrong it should be fixed or

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.

The biomedical model holds the belief that “disease either comes from outside the body, invade the body and cause physical changes within the body, or originates as internal involuntary physical changes” caused by bacteria, chemical imbalances, genetics and viruses (Ogden, 2007). This is seen as beyond the individual’s control, where individuals are seen as “victims” (Ogden, 2007), where responsibility for treatment lies with the medical profession and people should be treated with external medicines or methods such as surgery to change “the physical state of the body” (Ogden,

Throughout many readings, methods of study and findings criticism of sick role theory was visible or even implied. However it’s impossible for us to talk about the sick role without seeing the important contribution it has had in helping form a link between physiological, psychological and social processes. From my previous chapters I intended to illustrate Parsons functional study of social system. Here the attempt to understand broader concepts of his theory and criticisms by looking deeper into my questions of sick role application, role of doctors and the social control of deviance.

According to Kielhofner (2009), “The medical model is clearly the most influential and successful force in modern health care” p (238). The medical model is the method use by the physician to evaluate and treat patients. The medical model allows physicians to recognize diseases based on the signs, symptoms, etiology, and Prognosis. The physician has a lot of power over the patient. Kielhofner (2009) states that, “The medical model can thus be defined as the beliefs and knowledge that defined physicians as authoritative healers and that enable them to cure, ameliorate, or arrest disease through recognition and alternation of its