SOCI 3820 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Ivan Illich, Sick Role
25 Nov 2013
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Document Summary
The medicalization of behaviour considered deviant is a historical and social process and is the outcome of professional and social movement activity. Medicine continues to play a key role in medicalization; however other forces, such as the pharmaceutical industry, consumer groups, biotechnological discoveries, and health insurance are important engines of medicalization . This chapter outlines the concepts of medicalization and examines the relationship between medicalization and social control. It looks at the role of psychiatry in identifying and regulating deviance and the role of pharmaceutical companies in manufacturing illness. Increasingly, human experiences are coming under medical scrutiny with numerous aspects of daily life being defined as medical issues, resulting in what illich has called the medicalization of life . Medicalization describes the process whereby nonmedical problems or phenomena become defines and treated as medical issues, usually in terms of illnesses, disorders, or syndromes.
