SOCIOL 3630 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Thomas Szasz, Palliative Care, Symbolic Interactionism
Document Summary
Stages of illness experience: symptom experience, notice something is wrong, physical pain or discomfort, cognitive recognition, emotional response of concern, assessment of symptoms. Social construction of illness (medicalization and cultural: perception, threshold of pain and fear, almost 60% of u. s adults experienced chronic pain in the last year; 40% report being in pain all the time: knowledge (both patient and doctor, resources (palliative care and pain management, assumption of sick role, medical care contact, dependent patient role, recovery and rehabilitation. Social and cultural influence: variations in response to pain/medical symptoms based on socialization and cultural expectations, protestants of british descent: stiff upper lip/matter of fact: adapt more quickly, pain response: ethnic variations. Symbolic interactionism: the labeling approach to illness: labeling theory views the definition of illness to be a subjective matter, every society has its own norms for identifying behaviors and conditions that are defined as illness.